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Xake JEnolisb Classics, 

For College Entrance, 1899. 

Under the editorial supervision of LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A.B. 
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Gbe Xafce English Classics 



MILTON'S 



PARADISE LOST 



BOOKS I AND II 



EDITED FOR SCHOOL, USE 



FRANK EDGAR FARLEY, Ph.D. 

INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY 



CHICAGO 
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1898 






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Copyright 1898 
3y SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 



7, 



PREFACE 

This book aims to furnish the student merely 
such information as seems absolutely necessary to 
a comprehension of the text of Milton's poem. 
It is not intended to take the place of a 
teacher, but merely to prepare the way for him; 
for that reason nothing like aesthetic criticism or 
elaborate elucidation has been attempted. Neither 
is it meant to be a hand-book for teachers. Every 
teacher of Milton should own David Masson's 
larger three-volume edition of Milton's Poetical 
Works (New York, The Macmillan Co.), and the 
first volume, at least, of A. Wilson Verity's edition 
of Paradise Lost (Cambridge University Press, 
England). Other useful helps to the study of 
Milton are Masson's Life of John Milton, narrated 
in connexion with the political, ecclesiastical, and 
literary history of his time, six volumes (Macmil- 
lan) ; Pattison's Life of Milton (in the English 
Men of Letters series); Garnett's Life of Milton 
(in the Great Writers series, — particularly valuable 
for its Bibliography) ; [Selected'] English Prose 



8 PREFACE 

Writings of John Milton, edited by Henry Morley 
(in the Carisbrooke Library) ; Milton's Prosody, 
by Robert Bridges (Clarendon Press) ; The Astron- 
omy of Milton'' s Paradise Lost, by Thomas N. 
Orchard, M. D. (Longmans) ; Bradshaw's Con- 
cordance to the Poetical Works of John Milton 
(Macmillan) ; Lowell's Essay on Milton (Works, 
Riverside edition, Vol. IV) ; Macaulay's Essay on 
Milton. 

The editor has bnt one or two suggestions to 
make to teachers. It is intended that the Intro- 
duction shall be read through — not necessarily 
learned — before the text is touched. The Glossary 
and the Notes have purposely been made as com- 
pact as possible, in order that the student may 
master them so far as they pertain to each succes- 
sive lesson ; for, although the one aim of a course 
of study in Paradise Lost should be, it would 
seem, to teach the student to enjoy the poem, no 
poem can be adequately appreciated the text of 
which is in any degree unintelligible — and students 
are apt to deceive themselves with regard to the 
accuracy of their own interpretation of an English 
classic. On the other hand, it is hoped that too 
much of the time available in the class-room may 
not be spent in reciting the editor 's explanations, 



PREFACE 9 

for no poem should be associated in a student's 
mind merely with definitions and troublesome 
grammatical constructions. A skillful teacher will 
avoid both pedantry and undue laxity. 

The section on Milton's Verse has been added to 
the Introduction, with the hope that it may help 
the student in reading the poem aloud. It would 
be well if considerable portions of the verse might 
be read in class, with a view to bringing out its 
musical qualities. 

In the preparation of this book, free use has been 
made of Masson and Verity, and some help has 
been obtained from other editions, particularly 
those of Cook and Macmillan. The text is mainly 
that of Masson, with some alterations in punctua- 
tion. 

The editor wishes to acknowledge his obligation 
to Mr. Lindsay Todd Damon, of the University of 
Chicago, for his editorial indulgence, and for 
numerous valuable suggestions ; and to Dr. F. N. 
Robinson of Harvard University, for his kindness 
in revising the proof sheets of the Introduction, 
Notes and Glossary. 

F. E. F. 

Syracuse University, October, 1898. 



CONTENTS 

PAOE 

Introduction 

John Milton 13 

Milton's Works in the Order of Publication 22 

The Genesis of Paradise Lost ... 25 

The Subject Matter of Paradise Lost . 37 

Milton's English 57 

Milton's Verse . . . . • . . '65 

Milton's Preface on "The Verse" ... 73 

Text and Notes 77 

Glossary 151 



INTRODUCTION 



I. JOHN MILTON 



John Milton was born on the 9th of December, 
1608, in London. His father, a scrivener (a kind 
of notary, or framer of legal documents) by pro- 
fession, and a man of musical and literary tastes, 
took great pains that the boy's natural love for 
books and study should be stimulated, both by 
careful home training, and later by a course at St. 
Paul's School. John Aubrey, on the strength of 
information furnished by Milton's brother Christo- 
jmer, gives us a curious account of the studious 
lad: "When he went to schoole, when he was 
very young, he studied very hard and sate-up very 
late, commonly till 12 or one a clock at night, and 
his father ordered the mayde to sitt-up for him, 
and in those yeares (10) composed many copies of 
verses which might well become a riper age." 1 
Of these copies of verses, only paraphrases of two 
Psalms, and a poem On the Death of a Fair 
Infant Dying of a Cough , interesting chiefly as 
literary curiosities, have been preserved. 

1 'Brief Lives' chiefly of Contemporaries, set down by 
John Aubrey, between the years 1669 and 1696. Edited 
from the author's Mss. by Andrew Clark. Oxford, 1898, 
II, 63. 

13 



14 INTRODUCTION 

In due time Milton left his Puritan home to 
matriculate at Christ's College, Cambridge, where 
Aubrey says he "was a very good student . . . 
and performed all his exercises . . . with very 
good applause." In spite of some disagreement 
with the authorities (Aubrey says that on one 
occasion Milton's tutor "whipt him"), when the 
poet retired in 1632 to his father's house in 
Horton, Buckinghamshire, he could look back 
with satisfaction on his career at Cambridge: 
"There for seven years," he writes, "I studied the 
learning and arts wont to be taught, far from all 
vice and approved by all good men, even till, 
having taken what they call the Master's degree, 
and that with praise, I ... of my own accord 
went home, leaving even a sense of my loss among 
most of the Fellows of the College, by whom I 
had in no ordinary degree been regarded." 1 

Milton carried with him into his retirement some 
burdens of his own. He had made up his mind 
before the end of his university course that he 
could not conscientiously take orders, as his father 
had intended, and no profession appealed to him 
as an alternative, though he knew vaguely that his 
pursuits must be intellectual. He had already 
acquired some reputation by his pen : the Vacation 
Exercise, the ode On the Morning of Christ' 's 
Nativity, the lines Upon the Circumcision, On 
Shakspere, and on The Passion, the epitaphs on 

1 Defensio Secunda. (Masson's translation.) 



INTRODUCTION 15 

the University Carrier and the Marchioness of 
Winchester, and possibly some other pieces usually 
printed among Milton's minor poems, all belong 
to his college days. Of special interest among 
these minor pieces, is a sonnet written on Milton's 
twenty-third birthday, in which he laments that he 
has accomplished so little in life. Now that he 
had withdrawn from the university, his conscience 
would not allow him to lead a life of idleness, or 
even of isolation from the interests of the world 
about him; yet he was unable to determine defi- 
nitely the direction of his future activity. 

For five years Milton remained at Horton, read- 
ing widely, particularly in the classics, and thinking 
high thoughts. These years of study and medita- 
tion bore fruit in the finest of Milton's minor 
poems: to this period belong V Allegro, II Pen- 
seroso, Arcades, Comus and Lycidas. 

In the spring of 1638 Milton made a memorable 
journey to Italy. Everywhere the young fellow 
found a warm welcome. In Eome he was enter- 
tained by Cardinal Barberini. At Florence he was 
honored by the literary circle, and one day there 
came a dramatic moment when he stood in the 
presence of the blind Galileo, then "grown old, a 
prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in Astron- 
omy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican 
licensers thought. ,n At Naples he won the friend- 
ship of Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, 

1 Areopagitica. 



16 INTRODUCTION 

to whom he addressed one of the best known of 
his Latin poems. As Milton was about to leave 
Naples for Sicily and Greece, however, tidings 
reached him of the approach of civil war in 
England. "Thinking it base," he says, "to be 
travelling at my ease for intellectual culture while 
my fellow-countrymen at home were fighting for 
liberty," 1 he changed his plans and made a rather 
leisurely journey homeward, arriving in England 
in August, 1639. 

This year marks the end of Milton's long period 
of passivity, of scholarly acquisition and seclusion. 
Shortly after his return from Italy, the news of the 
death of his friend Charles Diodati prompted him 
to write the Epitaphium Damonis, the noblest of 
his numerous Latin poems; but this is the last 
sustained piece of verse we get from him in two 
decades. He began almost immediately to take 
such an active part in public affairs, that before 
many years few men in England were better known. 
By 1641 Milton had begun the long series of con- 
troversial pamphlets on religious, social and 
political questions which made his reputation 
among his contemporaries, and not until the decline 
of the Commonwealth did he again give serious 
attention to purely literary interests. Still, a few 
splendid sonnets are preserved to us in the wreck- 
age of these twenty years, and in 1645 Milton col- 
lected and published such poems as he had at hand 

1 Defensio Secunda. 



INTRODUCTION 17 

In March, 1649, two months after the execution 
of Charles L, Milton was made Latin secretary to 
the Committee of Foreign Affairs under the Com- 
monwealth. By January, 1651, he had so com- 
mended himself to the government that the Council 
of State entrusted to him the task of answering 
Salmasius's Defensio Regio }iro Carolo /., a 
dangerous book which had appeared during the 
previous autumn. Milton's physicians warned 
him that if he undertook this commission, his 
eyesight, which for some years had been weaken- 
ing, would probably fail him altogether, but he 
was not the man to flinch for any reason from 
what he believed to be his duty to the Common- 
wealth. Two months later the Latin Secretary 
sent to the press his Defensio pro Populo 
Anglicano, and by the following spring he was 
totally blind. He continued to supervise the 
foreign correspondence of the State, however, till 
the Restoration cut short forever his active partici- 
pation in politics. 

Most of the writings published by Milton during 
his controversial period have long since become 
obsolete, with the issues which occasioned them; 
some of them reveal an unpleasant side to Milton's 
character, for they show that this high-minded 
Puritan could be, when he chose, not only arrogant, 
but even savage and vituperative. Perhaps we 
need make special mention here only of the Reason 
of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty 



18 INTRODUCTION 

(1641), some portions of which deserve to be saved 
from oblivion for the splendor of their style, and 
for their autobiographical interest; of the Areopa- 
gitica (1644), a magnificent defence of the liberty 
of the press, and, on the whole, Milton's finest 
prose work ; and of The Tenure of Kings and Mag- 
istrates (1649), a strenuous defence of the judges 
of Charles I. In these and his other prose writ- 
ings, Milton stood in general for freedom of con- 
science and individual liberty: tyranny, whether 
it took the form of the cruelty of Laud, the intoler- 
ance of the Presbyterians, or the "divine right" of 
the Stuarts, was hateful to him. His strong sense 
of justice is apparent, again, in the group of sonnets 
which he gave to the world during these stormy 
years, and which are associated, for the most part, 
with men and matters of current interest. 

The last years of Milton's life were devoted largely 
to the composition of Paradise Lost (published 
1667), Paradise Regained (1671), and Samson 
Agonistes (1671), and the revision of his earlier 
poems (1673), though he found time for a Latin 
Grammar (1669), a History of Britain (1670) 
and other minor works. Milton's old age was not 
altogether solitary. "He was visited much by 
learned [men]: more than he did desire," says the 
ingenuous Aubrey. We know that among Mil- 
ton's visitors were some congenial young men who 
chatted with the blind poet, read to him, and 
wrote at his dictation. Two of these, Cyriack 



INTRODUCTION 19 

Skinner and a son of Henry Lawrence, Milton has 
commemorated in sonnets. Jonathan Eichardson, 
joint author with his son of Explanatory Notes 
and Remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost, pub- 
lished in London in 1734, has recorded (pp. iv, v) 
a quaint bit of contemporary comment on the poet 
in his latter days: "I have heard many Years 
Since," he notes, ''that he LTs'd to Sit in a Grey 
Coarse Cloath Coat at the Door of his House, near 
Bun-Mil Fields, Without Moor gate, in Warm 
Sunny Weather, to Enjoy the Fresh Air, and so, 
as well as in his Eoom, receiv'd the Visits of People 
of Distinguish 'd Parts, as well as Quality, and 
very Lately I had the Good Fortune to have 
Another Picture of him from an Ancient Clergy- 
man in Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright; He found him 
in a Small House, he thinks but One Room on a 
Floor: in That, up One pair of Stairs, which was 
hung with a Rusty Green, he found John Milton, 
Sitting in an Elbow Chair, Black Cloaths, and 
Neat enough, Pale but not Cadaverous, his Hands 
and Fingers Gouty, and with Chalk Stones, among 
Other Discourse He exprest Himself to This Pur- 
pose: that, was he Free from the Pain This gave 
him, his Blindness would be Tolerable." 

Milton's domestic life was not altogether pleas- 
ant. The first of his three wives, Mary Powell, 
a young and lively girl who had been reared in a 
Royalist family, was ill suited to a Puritan house- 
hold, and their incompatibility brought both her 



20 INTRODUCTION 

husband and herself much unhappiness. To Cath- 
erine Woodcock, his second wife, who died after only 
fifteen months of married life, Milton alludes with 
great tenderness in the sonnet beginning: 

Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave. 

Late in life he married Elizabeth Minshull, who 
seems to have done her best to make up, by her min- 
istrations, for the slights of Milton's not always 
dutiful daughters. She survived his death, which 
occurred on the 8th of November, 1674. 

Of Milton's personal characteristics we get some 
hint from Aubrey's scattered notes: "His har- 
monicall and ingeniose soul did lodge in abeautifull 
and well-proportioned body. He was a spare man. 
He was scarce so tall as I am [Aubrey describes 
himself as of 'middle stature'] . . . hehadabroun 
[i. e. auburn] hayre. His complexion exceeding 
faire — he was so faire that they called him the 
lady of Christ's College. Ovall face. His eie a 
dark gray . . . He had a delicate tuneable voice, 
and had good skill. His father instructed him. 
He had an organ in his howse : he played on that 
most ... Of a very cheerfull humour. — He 
would be chearfull even in his gowte-fitts, and 
sing . . . Extreme pleasant in his conversation, 
and at dinner, supper, etc. : but satyricall, . . . His 
wiclowe haz his picture, drawne very well and like, 
when a Cambridge schollar . . . which ought to 



INTRODUCTION 21 

be engraven ; for the pictures before his bookes are 
not at all like him." 

It is apparent from these jottings that Milton 
was by no means an uncompanionable man, how- 
ever austerely he may have written. It is not easy 
to estimate his character consistently. With his 
gentleness toward his friends we have to contrast 
his harshness, bitterness, and downright brutality 
toward his enemies. Measured by ordinary stand- 
ards, no man ever shaped for himself higher ideals ; 
yet he could apparently lose sight of those ideals 
in the very act of forcing them upon others. The 
confidence in his own judgment and in his own 
destiny which shows itself in Milton's earlier con- 
troversial writings never forsook him, even in the 
face of an affliction that would have crushed a less 
determined spirit. The same iron resolution that 
impelled him to sacrifice his eyesight for the good 
of his country, sustained him in his blindness so 
that he could say of himself : 

STet I argue not 
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate one jot 
Or heart or hope : but still bear up, and steer 
Right onward. 1 

It is Milton's indomitable courage and splendid 
self-reliance that give character to the man. The 
accident of his Puritan affiliations emphasized these 
qualities in his writings, and obscured the ten- 

1 Sonnet on his blindness, addressed to Cyriack Skin- 
ner. 



22 INTRODUCTION 

derness and human sympathy that, under other 
conditions, might have heen revealed to us in a 
more approachable, if less exalted, personality. 

II. MILTON'S WORKS IN THE ORDER OF PUBLI- 
CATION 

1. A Mask [Comus]. 1637. 

2. Lycidas [in "Obsequies to the Memory of Mr. 

Edward King"]. 1638. 

3. Of Eeformation touching Church-Discipline in 

England. 1641. 

4. Of Prelatical Episcopacy. 1641. 

5. Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's 

Defence against Smectymnuus. 1641. 

6. The Reason of Church-Government urged 

against Prelaty. 1641, 

7. An Apology against a Pamphlet called A 

Modest Confutation of the Animadversions 
upon the Remonstrant against Smectym- 
nuus. 1642. 

8. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. 1643. 

Second edition, enlarged, 1644. 

9. Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib. 

1644. Reprinted at the end of Milton's 
Poems in the edition of 1673. 

10. The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning 

Divorce, now Englished. 1644. 

11. Areopagitica. 1644. 

12. Tetrachordon. 1645. 

13. Colasterion. 1645. 

14. Poems . . . both English and Latin, composed 

at several times. [The English poems : On 
the Morning of Christ's Nativity; A Para- 
phrase on Psalm CXIV; Psalm CXXXVI; 
The Passion ; On Time ; Upon the Circum- 



INTRODUCTION 23 

cision; At a Solemn Music; An Epitaph on 
the Marchioness of Winchester; Song on 
May Morning; On Shakspere; On the 
University Carrier ; Another on the Same ; 
L'Allegro; II Penseroso; Ten sonnets, as 
follows: "0 Nightingale," five sonnets in 
Italian, "How soon hath Time," "Captain 
or Colonel," "Lady, that in the prime of 
earliest youth," "Daughter to that good 
Earl"; Arcades; Lycidas; Comus. The 
Latin Poems consisted of an Elegiarum 
Liber, containing fifteen pieces, and a 
Sylvarum Liber, containing nine, to which 
were added two bits of Greek verse. 

To the second edition, 1673, were added 
the nine following sonnets: "A book was 
writ of late," "I did but prompt the 
age," "Harry, whose tuneful and well 
measured song," "When Faith and 
Love," "Avenge, Lord, thy slaughtered 
saints," "Wlien I consider how my light 
is spent," "Lawrence," "Cyriack, whose 
grandsire on the royal bench," "Me- 
thought I saw my late espoused saint"; 
also the poem On the New Forcers of Con- 
science; a translation of the Fifth Ode of 
the First Book of Horace; paraphrases of 
Psalms I-VIII, LXXX-LXXXVIII; On 
the Death of a Fair Infant; A Vacation 
Exercise; two more Latin poems, and a 
Greek epigram on Marshall's engraving of 
Milton's portrait.] 1645. 

15. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. 1649. 

16. Observations upon the Articles of Peace with 

the Irish Rebels. 1649. 

17. Eikonoklastes. 1649. 



24 INTRODUCTION 

IS. Pro Populo Anglicano defensio contra Claudii 
anonymi, alias Salmasii Defensionem 
Regiam. 1651. 

19. Pro populo Anglicano defensio secunda. 1654. 

20. Pro se defensio contra Alexandnim Morum 

[with a Supplementum Responsio]. 1655. 

21. Scriptum Domini Protectoris contra . . . 

Hispanos. 1655. 

22. A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical 

Causes. 1659. 

23. Considerations touching the likeliest means to 

remove Hirelings out of the Church. 1659. 

24. The Ready and Easy way to establish a Free 

Commonwealth. 1660. 

25. Brief Notes upon a late Sermon . . . preached 

... by Matthew Griffeth, D. D. 1660. 

26. Paradise Lost. 1667. Second edition, 1674; 

third, 1678; fourth, 1688. 

27. Accidence commenced Grammar. . . . 1669. 

28. The History of Britain. 1670. 

29. Artis Logicae plenior Institutio. 1670. 

30. Paradise Regained. 1671. 

31. Samson Agonistes [published with the preced- 

ing]. 1671. 

32. Of true Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, 

and what best means may be used against 
the growth of Popery. 1673. 

33. Epistolarum Familiarum liber unus. 1674. 

34. A Declaration or Letters Patent of the Election 

of this present King of Poland, John the 
Third [a translation]. 1674. 

POSTHUMOUS 

35. Literse Pseudo-Senatus Anglicani, etc. 1676. 

36. Character of the Long Parliament and 

Assembly of Divines in 1641. [This is of 



INTRODUCTION 25 

doubtful authenticity. It purports to be a 
suppressed portion of Milton's History of 
Britain.] 1681. 

37. A Brief History of Muscovia. 1682. 

38. Letters of State. [A translation of No. 35 

above. Edited by Milton's nephew, 
Edward Phillips, with a life of Milton pre- 
fixed. This volume contained four sonnets 
never before printed: To Cromwell; To 
Fairfax; To Sir Henry Vane; To Cyriack 
Skinner ("Cyriack, this three-years-day 
these eyes").] 1694. 

39. The first edition of the collected Prose Works 

of Milton, published in 1697, contained two 
tracts never before printed : A Letter to a 
Friend Concerning the Ruptures of the 
Commonwealth (written in 1659) ; The 
Present Means and Brief Delineation of a 
Free Commonwealth (written in 1660). 

40. De Doctrina Christiana. 1825. 

III. THE GENESIS OF PARADISE LOST 

When John Milton returned to his father's house 
in 1639, after his triumphal tour in Italy, it was 
with a serious purpose to do something for England 
that should justify the long years of leisurely study 
which his father's indulgence had made possible. 
Milton's tastes and accomplishments were those of 
a man of letters, and he seems to have meant, 
from the first, to serve his country in some way 
with his pen. He was more at his ease in verse 
than in prose, 1 and a great poem seemed to him the 

1 In The Reason of Church Government, he apologizes 
for writing in prose, "wherein knowing myself inferior 



26 INTRODUCTION 

most fitting memorial he could leave his country- 
men — perhaps an epic, which should mean to 
Englishmen what the Iliad meant to the Greeks, or 
the JEneid to the Romans. The earliest specific 
hint we get of a purpose to compose such a poem, 
occurs in the Latin lines addressed to Manso in 
1639, where he wishes the Spirit might aid him in 
singing of King Arthur and the Knights of the 
Round Table. Later in the same year, certain 
verses in the Epitaphium Damonis indicate that 
the idea of an Arthurian epic still appealed to him. 
Again, in a famous passage in The Reason of 
Church Government, published in 1641, Milton 
speaks, less definitely, of his ambition to "leave 
something so written to aftertimes as they should 
not willingly let it die" — something, moreover, not 
in Latin, then commonly regarded as the more 
elegant and dignified language, but in English. 
Having made up his mind to this, "I applied 
myself," he writes, "to that resolution which 
Ariosto followed against the persuasions of Bembo, 
to fix all the industry and art I could unite 
to the adorning of my native tongue: not to 
make verbal curiosities the end (that were a 
toilsome vanity), but to be an interpreter and 
relater of the best and sagest things among 
mine own citizens throughout this Island in 

to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another 
task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left 
hand." 



INTRODUCTION 27 

the mother-dialect; that what the greatest and 
choicest wits of Athens, Kome, or modern Italy, 
and those Hebrews of old, did for their country, 
I, in my proportion, with this over and above of 
being a Christian, might do for mine; not caring 
to be once named abroad, though perhaps I conld 
attain to that, but content with these British 
Islands as my world, whose fortune hath hitherto 
been that, if the Athenians, as some say, made 
their small deeds great and renowned by their 
eloquent writers, England hath had her noble 
achievements made small by the unskillful handling 
of monks and mechanics." Then he goes on to 
express his doubt whether the poem he contem- 
plates had best take "that Epic form whereof the 
two poems of Homer, and those other two of 
Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the Book of 
Job a brief , model," or "whether those Dramatic 
constitutions wherein Sophocles and Euripides 
reign shall be found more doctrinal and exemplary 
to a nation. The Scripture," he points out, "also 
affords us a divine Pastoral Drama in the Song of 
Solomon, consisting of two persons and a double 
chorus, as Origen rightly judges; and the 
Apocalypse of Saint John is the majestic image 
of a high and stately Tragedy, shutting up 
and intermingling her solemn scenes and acts 
with a sevenfold 1 chorus of hallelujas and harping 
symphonies." And he not only hesitates between 
the epic and the dramatic forms of composition, 



28 INTRODUCTION 

but he is uncertain "what king or knight before 
the Conquest might be chosen in whom to lay the 
pattern of a Christian hero." In view of subse- 
quent developments it is significant that he should 
here turn to Scriptural examples both of the epic 
and of the drama. 

The projected poem continued to weigh on 
Milton's conscience. In the Library of Trinity 
College, Cambridge, is a manuscript note-book 
containing among other things a list of about a 
hundred subjects suitable for dramatic treatment, 
jotted down in the poet's handwriting apparently 
between the years 1639 and 1642. Sixty of these 
subjects, according to Masson, are drawn from 
Biblical, and thirty -eight from British history. 
At the head of the list are four drafts, in outline, 
of a play to be modelled after the Greek tragedy, 
with a chorus, and to be called Paradise Lost, or 
Adam Unparadised. Other Scriptural topics are 
The Flood, Abraham and Isaac, Joshua, Samson, 
David, Solomon, Christ Bom, Herod Massacring, 
Lazarus, and Christus Patiens. Among the topics 
from British history, are The Massacre of the 
Britons by Hengist in their Cups at Salisbury 
Plain, A. D. 450-476; Ethelbert of the East 
Angles, Slain by Off a the Mercian King, A. D. 
792; Alfred, in Disguise of a Minstrel, Discovers 
the Danes'" Negligence; Sets on with a Mighty 
Slaughter, A. D. 878; Harold Slain in Battle by 
William the Norman, A. D. 1066; Macbeth, 



INTRODUCTION 20 

Beginning at the Arrival of Malcom at Macduff. 
Arthur is not mentioned — perhaps, it has been 
conjectured, because Milton felt that aftef all he 
could not concern himself with unauthenticated 
legends — possibly because with his growing republi- 
canism he had lost his enthusiasm for purely chiv- 
alrous ideals. 

We may believe that of all these subjects, Milton 
was most attracted by Paradise Lost: for he not 
only made four attempts at planning the tragedy, 
but he seems actually to have written some of the 
text. "In the 4th booke of Paradise Lost," 
records Aubrey, "there are about six verses of 
Satan's exclamation to the sun, which Mr. E. 
Phil[l]ips remembers about 15 or 16 yeares before 
ever his poem was thought of. Which verses were 
intended for the beginning of a tragoedie which he 
had designed, but was diverted from it by other 
businesse." 1 This "other businesse, " as we 
have seen, proved to be of a sufficiently serious 
character. These were stirring times in England, 
and with the civil and religious liberty of his 
countrymen at stake, Milton's conscience would 
not allow him to spend his days in making verses. 
What he might ultimately have accomplished had 

1 This evidence is corroborated by Phillips (Milton's 
nephew) himself, in the memoir prefixed to his edition 
of Milton's Letters of State, London, 1694 (p. xxxv.) 
It appears that the verses here referred to are 11. 32-41 
of the present Fourth Book. 



30 INTRODUCTION 

this crisis not arisen, is a matter of interesting but 
futile conjecture. Political life is not ordinarily 
thought of as the best possible school for a poet : 
how far the stress and strain of those twenty years 
made or unmade this poet, no man can say: one 
thing we know — the Heavenly Vision came at last, 
and John Milton was not disobedient. 

It was not until about the year 1658 that Milton 
found leisure to take up again the idea that had 
dominated his youth. There was no question, 
now, so far as we know, of topic or of form. To 
the blind and disappointed Puritan statesman, 
Paradise Lost seemed the one inevitable subject, 
and for some reason the poem shaped itself in his 
mind as an epic rather than as a drama. Masson 
has collected for us scraps of contemporary testi- 
mony which, in the aggregate, give us a tolerably 
clear notion of the process of composition. Milton 
would think out his lines until he had twenty or 
thirty in his head, then ask the first friend who 
came to hand to take them down from dictation. 
Occasionally, some one would read to him, for cor- 
rection, the passages which had been written in 
this piecemeal fashion. Phillips, in his memoir, 
gives us some account of Milton's amanuenses. 
His daughters "he made serviceable to him in that 
very particular in which he most wanted their 
Service, and supplied his want of Eye-sight by their 
Eyes and Tongue ; for, though he had daily about 

1 P. xli, f. 



INTRODUCTION 31 

him one or other to Read to him — some, persons of 
Man's Estate, who of their own accord greedily 
catch 'd at the opportunity of being his Readers, 
that they might as well reap the benefit of what 
they Read to him as oblige him by the benefit of 
their reading; others, of younger years, sent by 
their Parents to the same end — yet, excusing only 
the Eldest Daughter by reason of ber bodily Infirm- 
ity, and difficult utterance of Speech, . . . the other 
two were Condemn'dtothe performance of Reading 
and exactly pronouncing all the Languages of what- 
ever Book he should at one time or other think fit 
to peruse. Viz. The Hebrew (and I think the 
Syriac) the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Span- 
ish, and French. All which sorts of Books to be 
confined to Read without understanding one word 
must needs be a Tryal of Patience almost beyond 
endurance ; yet it was endured by both for a 
longtime." 

It appears from the foregoing that the duties of 
Milton's amanuenses were by no means restricted 
to the preparation of a fair copy of the poem. 
Notwithstanding the vast store of learning which 
the poet brought to his task, he was continually 
making researches that should increase the wealth 
of his allusion. Years before he had solemnly 
recorded his conviction that such a work as he now 
had in hand was "not to be raised from the heat of 
youth, or the vapors of wine — like that which flows 
at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or 



32 INTRODUCTION 

the trencher fury of a riming parasite ; nor to be 
obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and 
her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that 
Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance 
and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with 
the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify 
the lips of whom he pleases. To this," he con- 
cluded significantly, "must be added industrious 
and select reading, steady observation, insight into 
all seemly and generous arts and affairs. . . . ,n 
The last two decades had given him his opportuni- 
ties for observation, and insight into affairs; and 
now that the time had come for the work to which 
he had so long ago consecrated himself, he was 
beginning the day with a chapter in the Hebrew 
Bible and an hour or two of meditation, and spend- 
ing much of the remaining time in the special read- 
ing that he conceived his task demanded. 2 The 
results of this laborious preparation are not super- 
imposed upon the poem as a kind of decoration — 
they are a part of its very texture. "Milton must 
have had the Bible almost entirely by heart," says 
Masson. "Not only are some passages of his poem, 
where he is keeping close to the Bible as his 
authority, intentional coagulations of dispersed 
Scriptural texts ; but it is possible again and again, 

1 The Reason of Church Government. 

2 Aubrey is our authority. It should be remembered 
that Milton had in hand at this time, besides Paradise 
Lost, a History of Britain and other prose works. 



INTRODUCTION 33 

throughout the rest, to detect the flash, through his 
noblest language, of some suggestion from the 
Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels, or the Apoc- 
alypse. So, though in a less degree, with Homer, 
the Greek Tragedians (among whom Euripides was 
a special favourite of his), Plato, Demosthenes, and 
the Greek classics generally. So with Lucretius, 
Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Juvenal, Persius, and 
the other Latins. So with the Italian writers whom 
he knew so well — Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, 
and others now less remembered. So with modern 
Latinists of various European countries, still less 
recoverable. 1 Finally, so with the whole series of 
preceding English poets — particularly Spenser, 
Shakespeare, and some of the minor Spenser ians 
of the reigns of James and Charles I. , that quaint 
popular favourite of his boyhood, Sylvester's Du 
Bartas, not forgotten." 2 

We have seen that for the successful accomplish- 
ment of his design, Milton relied — the passage is 
fine enough to bear repetition — on "devout prayer 
to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all 
utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Ser- 
aphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch 
and purify the lips of whom he pleases." Again 

1 Professor Masson does not mean that these works 
are lost, but that they are not always easily accessible 
to the ordinary reader. 

2 Milton's Poetical Works. New York and London, 
1894, II, 55 f. 



34 INTRODUCTION 

he writes, in the same connection, that the fulfill- 
ment of his plan "lies not but in a power above 
man's to promise.' ' There can be but little doubt 
that the poet regarded himself as at times directly 
inspired from Heaven, and that consequently his 
invocations to the Heavenly Muse are something 
more than an ordinary epic convention. At the 
beginning of the ninth book he tells us that his 
"celestial Patroness" 

Deigns 
Her nightly visitation unimplored, 
And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires 
Easy my unpremeditated verse. 

It seems to be literally true that Milton composed 
much at night, sometimes ringing up his daughter 
"at what hour soever," Eichardson says, "to 
secure what came" — sometimes dictating twenty 
or thirty verses to his wife in the morning. Phil- 
lips reports that his vein flowed most happily 
between the autumnal and the vernal equinoxes, 
and that accordingly "in all the years he was 
about this poem, he may be said to have spent but 
half his time therein." 

The process of composition went on, apparently, 
for six or seven years. In the autumn of 1665, 
Thomas Ell wood, a young Quaker — one of those 
persons who had "greedily catch 'd at the oppor- 
tunity" of reading to Milton, visited the poet at 
his cottage in Chalfont-St. -Giles, in Buckingham- 
shire. "After some common discourses had passed 



INTRODUCTION 35 

between us, ' ' Ell wood writes in his Autobiography, 1 
4 'he called for a manuscript of his; which being 
brought he delivered to me, bidding me take it 
home with me and read it at my leisure ; and when 
I had so done, return it to him with my judgment 
thereupon. When I came home, and had set my- 
self to read it, I found it was that excellent Poem, 
which he intitled Paradise Lost." 2 

It was not until the end of August, 1667, that the 
poem, consisting at this stage of ten books, had 
been printed by Samuel Simmons in an edition 
of rather more than thirteen hundred copies. 
Milton received five pounds in cash (worth nearly 
eighteen pounds at the present standard), and was 
to be paid a like sum as the first, second and third 
editions were each in turn entirely disposed of, 
each edition to be reckoned at thirteen hundred 
copies. Considering the nature of Milton's poem 
and the temper of these Restoration times, the book 
sold surprisingly well, for by the end of April, 
1669, the first edition had been exhausted and Mil- 

1 The History of the Life of Thomas Elhvood . . . 
written by his own hand, Fourth edition, Lond., 1791, 
p. 212 f. 

a It was a remark of Ellwood's on the return of this 
manuscript — "Thou hast said much here of Paradise 
Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?" — 
that led to the composition of Milton's lesser epic, 
Paradise Regained, published in connection with Sam- 
son Agonistes in 1671. 



36 INTRODUCTION 

ton received his second five pounds. 1 In 1674, 
the year of Milton's death, the second edition 
appeared, with the seventh and tenth books each 
divided, so that there were now twelve books 
instead of ten. The growing popularity of the 
poem is curiously attested by the publication, this 
same year, of Dryden's State of Innocence, an 
impossible opera adapted by Milton's permission 2 
from Paradise Lost. The preface speaks of Mil- 
ton's epic as "undoubtedly one of the greatest, 
most noble, and most sublime poems which either 
this age or nation has produced." 

The fourth edition, published in 1688 by the 
famous Jacob Tonson, 3 was an expensive, illus- 
trated folio, to which some of the most eminent 
men in England subscribed. In connection with 
the sixth edition, 1G95, appeared the first commen- 
tary on the poem, furnished by a Scotch school- 
master named Patrick Home. Before the end of 
the seventeenth century, then, the book was being 

1 This was the last installment paid to the poet person- 
ally. Six years after Milton's death, his widow ac- 
cepted eight pounds from the publisher as a full com- 
pensation for all her rights in the poem, so that 
altogether Paradise Lost brought Milton and his heirs 
eighteen pounds (equivalent to sixty-three pounds in 
modern currency). 

2 Not any too graciously given, if we may believe 
Aubrey : "Mr. Milton recieved him civilly, and told him 
he would give him leave to tagge his verses." 

3 Tonson at this time owned but half the copyright. 



INTRODUCTION 37 

frequently reissued and carefully studied. Early 
in the eighteenth century Addison contributed 
to the Spectator his important series of criticisms 
on the poem ; reprints, commentaries and critical 
essays continued to multiply, and the succession 
has been maintained unbroken down to our own 
day. Within a quarter of a century of his death 
Milton's fame was secure, and as he had hoped, 
"aftertimes" have shown no disposition to lose 
interest in the one English epic — if we except the 
fragmentary Beowulf — worthy the name. 

IVATHE SUBJECT-MATTER OF PARADISE LOST 

Of the various subjects which Milton passed in 
review when he was evolving the idea of his great 
poem, none offered such literary possibilities as the 
story of the creation, temptation and fall of man. 
Indeed it is hard to conceive of a more exalted 
theme. Here was matter, not, to be sure, for a 
national epic which should perpetuate the achieve- 
ments of the English race, but for something far 
nobler — an epic of the entire human race. Here 
was a theme, moreover, that would touch English 
interests as closely as the story of Arthur or of any 
other national hero. The Bible was the one 
familiar book in every household, and to most 
Englishmen the expulsion from Eden jvas an event 
far more real than the Saxon or the Norman con- 
quest. Not only the literature of Milton's time,* 



38 INTRODUCTION 

but the very speech of the common people was 
impregnated with Scriptural allusion. 

The notion of a Biblical epic was not original 
with Milton; for centuries the Bible had been a 
favorite subject, in European literature, for poetical 
treatment. As far back as the fourth century of 
our era we find here and there the Gospel narrative, 
the Scriptural account of the Creation, the destruc- 
tion of Sodom, the ministry of Jonah, the Deluge, 
and other episodes of the Old and the New Testa- 
ment unskillfully written down, with much show of 
elaboration, in Latin hexameters. 1 One of the 
best known relics of Anglo-Saxon literature that 
has come down to us — the so-called Credmonic 
Paraphrase — is a clumsy attempt, made presumably 
in the seventh century, to re-tell, with certain 
embellishments, the stories of Genesis, Exodus 
and Daniel. In Italy and in Holland, in Milton's 
own century, plays and other poems on Scriptural 
subjects were occasionally produced, and Sylves- 
ter's Divine Weekes and Workes (1605), a trans- 
lation from the French of Du Bartas, is an example 
of a pre-Miltonic treatment of a similar theme. 

When Milton tells us, then, that he intends to 
write of : 

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme 
we must not take him too literally. No 

1 Examples are the Historia Evangelica of Juvencus, 
the Paschale Carmen of Sedulius, and the Be Spiritalis 
Historice Gestis of Avitus. 



INTRODUCTION 39 

one knew better than Milton — most learned of 
English poets — of the existence of poems of the 
same general type as his own. He has even been 
accused of stealing right and left from his pred- 
ecessors in this field, so that if we are to believe 
some critics, Paradise Lost is but a patchwork 
arrangement of scraps and shreds borrowed without 
acknowledgment from these Latin, Anglo-Saxon, 
Italian, Dutch and English sources. In view of 
the similarities in characterization, description and 
method which are inevitable when several writers 
attempt to treat independently a subject as definite 
and as familiar as the one under discussion, it is 
hard to say how far Milton may have been indebted 
to these earlier Biblical poems. Like the rest, Mil- 
ton felt obliged to adhere to the generally accepted 
idea of the Creation and the events immediately fol- 
lowing, as outlined in the Old Testament, certain 
apocryphal writings — notably the Gospel of Nico- 
demus — and the commentaries of mediaeval theo- 
logians. But granted this inevitable parallelism in 
the general method of procedure, Milton's poem is 
still, regarded in its entirety, quite unlike anything 
written before or since. The grandeur of the 
scale on which the poem is conceived, the height 
and breadth and depth of the blind Milton's 
spiritual vision, the unapproachable dignity of his 
style, make Paradise Lost not only far and away 
the best Biblical epic in any language, but one of 
the great epics of all time. 



40 INTRODUCTION 

For the reader who approaches Milton's poem 
for the first time, the text is full of difficulties of 
language and allusion. Some of these difficulties, 
however, may be disposed of at the outset by a 
general account of the structure and meaning of 
the poem. In the first place the reader must have 
clearly in mind the physical conditions under which 
the action is supposed to take place. Milton car- 
ries us back to a time when there was no Earth, no 
Universe of sun and planets and fixed stars, no 
Hell. We have to think of all existing things as 
contained, at the beginning of the poem, in two 
Vast, indefinite tracts, approximately hemispherical, 
whose functions Masson explains as follows : 

"The upper of these two hemispheres of 
Primeval Infinity is Heaven, or The Empyrean — a 
boundless, unimaginable region of light, freedom, 
happiness, and glory, in the midst whereof God, 
though omnipresent, has His immediate and visible 
dwelling. He is here surrounded by a vast popu- 
lation of beings, called 'The Angels,' or 'Sons of 
God,' who draw near to His throne in worship, 
derive thence their nurture and their delight, and 
yet live dispersed through all the ranges and 
recesses of the region, leading severally their 
mighty lives and performing the behests of Deity, 
but organised into companies, orders, and hier- 
archies. Milton is careful to explain that all that he 
says of Heaven is said symbolically, and in order 
to make conceivable by the human imagination 



INTRODUCTION 41 

what in its own nature is inconceivable; but, this 
once explained, he is bold enough in his use of 
terrestrial analogies. Bound the immediate throne 
of Deity, indeed, there is kept a blazing mist of 
vagueness, which words are hardly permitted to 
pierce, though the Angels are represented as from 
time to time assembling within it, beholding the 
Divine Presence and hearing the Divine Voice. 
But Heaven at large, or portions of it, are figured 
as tracts of a celestial Earth, with plain, hill, and 
valley, whereon the myriads of the Sons of God 
expatiate, in their two orders of Seraphim and 
Cherubim, and in their descending ranks, as 
Archangels or Chiefs, Princes of various degrees, 
and individual Powers and Intelligences. Certain 
differences, however, are implied as distinguishing 
these Celestials from the subsequent race of Man- 
kind. As they are of infinitely greater prowess, 
immortal, and of more purely spiritual nature, so 
their ways even of physical existence and action 
transcend all that is within human experience. 
Their forms are dilatable or contractible at 
pleasure; they move with incredible swiftness; 
and, as they are not subject to any law of gravita- 
tion, their motion, though ordinarily represented 
as horizontal over the Heavenly ground, may as 
well be vertical or in any other direction, and their 
aggregations need not, like those of men, be in 
squares, oblongs, or other plane figures, but may 
be in cubes, or other rectangular or oblique solids, 



42 INTRODUCTION 

or in spherical masses. These and various other 
particulars are to be kept in mind concerning 
Heaven and its pristine inhabitants. As respects 
the other half or hemisphere of the Primeval 
Infinity, though it, too, is inconceivable in its 
nature, and has to be described by words which 
are at best symbolical, less needs be said. For it 
is Chaos, or the Uninhabited — a huge, limitless 
ocean, abyss, or quagmire, of universal darkness 
and lifelessness, wherein are jumbled in blustering 
confusion the elements of all matter, or rather the 
crude embryons of all the elements, ere as yet they 
, are distinguishable. There is no light there, nor 
properly Earth, Water, Air, or Fire, but only a 
vast pulp or welter o^unfoimed matter, in which 
all these lie tempestuously intermixed. Though 
the presence of Deity is there potentially too, it 
is still, as it were, actually retracted thence, as 
from a realm unorganised and left to Night and 
Anarchy ; nor do any of the Angels wing down into 
its repulsive obscurities. The crystal floor or wall 
of Heaven divides them from it; underneath 
which, and unvisited of light, save what may 
glimmer through upon its nearer strata, it howls 
and rages and stagnates eternally." 1 

This cosmos sufficed for untold ages, until in the 
process of time the rebellion of a third part of the 
Angels of Heaven made it necessary that a new 
region should be provided for their imprisonment. 

1 Milton's Poetical Works, II, 79 f. 



INTRODUCTION 43 

Then the Almighty set apart in the depths of 
Chaos a district called Hell, shut in by walls and 
roof of fire, and guarded by ninefold gates of 
brass, iron, and adamantine rock. The ever- 
burning soil of this dismal waste is diversified by 
volcanic hills and drained by five rivers, four of 
which discharge into a lake of fire; beyond the 
fifth, Lethe, which Professor Himes 1 thinks is to 
be regarded rather as an endless canal encircling 
the lake at some distance — 

A frozen continent 
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms 
Of whirlwind and dire hail ; 

for as in the Inferno of Dante, extreme cold, as 
well as extreme heat, is used as an instrument of 
torture. 

In the course of the nine days during which the 
rebellious angels lie * 'rolling in the fiery gulf" of 
Hell, after their fearful fall from the Empyrean, 
the Messiah, by direction of the Almighty, creates 
in the midst of another portion of Chaos, close to 
Heaven and suspended from it by a golden chain, 
our World — that is to say, Earth with the ten 
enveloping spheres which, according to a late 
modification of the Ptolemaic system of Astronomy, 
make up the Universe. The general situation 

1 Paradise Lost . . . With an Introduction and Notes 
on its Structure and Meaning. By J. A. Himes, N. Y., 
1898, pp. 14 ff. 



44 



INTRODUCTION 



at this stage may be illustrated by the following 
diagram, adapted from Masson: 




In this diagram, the series of concentric spheres 
comprising the Ptolemaic Universe are represented 
in cross section, so that they appear as concentric 
rings, with the Earth like a dot at the centre. All 
but the outermost of these spheres were believed 
to be transparent, and to revolve about the Earth. 
The first sphere, counting from the Earth out- 
ward, carried with it the moon; the second, the 
planet Mercury ; the third, Venus ; the fourth, the 
Sun; the fifth, Mars; the sixth, Jupiter; the 



INTRODUCTION 45 

seventh, Saturn; the eighth, the fixed stars; the 
ninth was the Crystalline Sphere which caused the 
procession of the equinoxes ; the tenth, the Primum 
Mobile, revolved with all the other spheres about 
the Earth, completing one revolution every twenty- 
four hours, thus bringing about the alternation 
of day and night. A man standing on the Earth 
and looking upward, then, would find himself 
gazing into the crystal depths of these spheres — 
his sky — which Milton in one place 1 rather con- 
fusingly calls Heaven, for the opaque Primum 
Mobile would prevent his seeing into the real 
Heaven of the Angels, the Empyrean. 

It will be remembered that the Copernican 
theory of Astronomy, which makes the sun the 
centre of our Universe, was known but not gen- 
erally accepted in England in Milton's time. 
Milton shows hia familiarity with this theory in at 
least two passages in Paradise Lost — Bk. iv, 592- 
597, and Bk. viii, 15-178. The latter passage is 
of particular interest, for in it the Archangel 
Raphael is represented as discussing with Adam 
the respective merits of the Ptolemaic and the 
Copernican systems, and it affords some ground 
for believing that Milton was himself almost, if not 
quite, ready to accept the theory of Copernicus. 
Whatever his personal views on the question may 
have been, however, we can readily understand 
why he should have adopted in his epic the 

1 Paradise Lost, ii, 1004. 



46 INTRODUCTION 

picturesque conception of the universe so familiar 
in literature, so generally accepted by his readers, 
and so well adapted to poetic imagery. 

For the purposes of his poem, Milton adds to the 
commonly received theory some special details 
partly original, partly borrowed. The Ptolemaic 
Universe is represented as hanging from the 
floor of Heaven by a golden chain. When- 
ever one of the angels wishes to visit Earth, a 
golden ladder is lowered from Heaven to the 
Primum Mobile — the opaque, shell -like outer sphere 
— in which is a trap-door leading to the starry 
depths below, and eventually to our Earth, for the 
spheres concentric within the Primum Mobile 
apparently offer no impediment to spiritual essences. 
After the fall of Man, Sin and Death bridge over 
that portion of Chaos separating Hell from the 
Primum Mobile, so that the fiends may have free 
access to our Earth. Most extraordinary of all is 
a desolate, wind-swept tract on the outer shell of 
the Primum Mobile, called by Milton, Limbo, or 
the Paradise of Fools. 

No diagram can give the faintest suggestion of 
the vastness of the scale on which all this is 
planned. The only specific information Milton 
imparts with regard to measurement, is that the 
distance from Heaven to Hell is three times the 
radius of the Ptolemaic system. 1 This is puz- 
zling, for when Satan, after his long voyage through 

1 Paradise Lost, i, 73, 74. 



INTRODUCTION 47 

Chaos, catches his first glimpse of our universe 
pendent from Heaven, it appears to him 

In bigness as a star 
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon. 1 

And even this is a highly inadequate comparison, 
for Heaven seems so huge to Satan that he cannot 
tell whether it is square or round. It is probable 
that the whole matter presented itself with more or 
less vagueness to Milton's imagination, and that 
he himself could not have constructed a chart 
which should have been absolutely consistent with 
his narrative ; his Heaven and Hell were not built 
from an architect's plans and specifications, and 
no surveyor followed Satan through Chaos. 

Now that we have some idea of Milton's cos- 
mography, we shall find it convenient to sum up 
the story which the poem tells. The creation 
of the new planetary universe served a single 
purpose — the peopling of the earth at its centre 
with a new race who should repair the loss occa- 
sioned by the expulsion of the rebel angels 
from Heaven ; and, though first and last the poem 
covers the entire range of human destiny, it is 
with the vicissitudes of the earliest representatives 
of this race that Paradise Lost professes to be 
chiefly concerned. Instead of beginning with the 
rebellion in Heaven and going on to relate in 
chronological order the various events that led to 
the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden 

1 Paradise Lost, ii, 1052-3. 



48 INTRODUCTION 

of Eden, Milton chooses, like Homer and Virgil, 
to plunge at once into the midst of the action, and 

I to sum up later the earlier stages of the story. 
Accordingly, when Milton's first book opens, the 
revolt of the angels is supposed to have been 
accomplished. The rebels have been cast out 
of Heaven, have fallen for nine days through 
Chaos, the roof of Hell has closed over them, and 
for another nine days they have been weltering v / 
4 'thunderstruck and astonished, ' ' in the lake of fire. 
Satan, their leader, is the first to recover himself. 
He rallies Beelzebub, his lieutenant, then in a 
speech full of stinging innuendo, arouses the rebel 
army. They make their way to the shore where 
Mammon and his crew erect, with magical rapidity, 
a stately palace, Pandemonium, within which the 
chiefs assemble in council. 

The second book opens with the debate in 
Pandemonium. Moloch counsels continued war 
against the Almighty, even if it end in annihila- 
tion; Belial is for "ignoble ease and peaceful 
sloth"; Mammon advises making the best of the 
situation by developing the natural resources of 
Hell; Beelzebub reminds the company of the 
rumor that Earth and Mankind are about this time 
to be created, and suggests that some one investi- 
gate the matter with a view to seeing if Man may 
not be made to join them in dishonoring God. 
Satan applauds this last scheme, and volunteers to 
undertake, alone, the dangerous quest; whereupon 



INTRODUCTION 49 

the council approves and adjourns. Satan makes 
his way to the gates of Hell ; after some opposi- 
tion, the guardians, Sin and Death, allow him to 
pass beyond. He steers his course through 
Chaos, pacifies the old Anarch and his consort, 
Night, who rule the region, and finally catches 
sight of the newly-made Universe, hanging, star- 
like, close under the wall of Heaven. 

The third book begins with a magnificent 
apostrophe to Light. The Almighty, from his 
throne in Heaven, sees Satan approaching the 
Earth. To the Son, he foretells Satan's success 
in seducing Mankind, Man's impending fall from 
grace, and the necessity of a Eedeemer. The Son 
offers himself as a ransom. The Father accepts 
him, and the angels ''hymning to their harps in 
full quire, celebrate the Father and the Son." 
Meanwhile, Satan has found footing on the "bare 
convex" of the Primum Mobile. He proceeds 
through the Limbo of Vanity, or the Fools' 
Paradise, to the stairway which leads him down 
into the planetary spheres. Disguising himself as 
an angel of lower rank, he journeys on to the 
sphere of the Sun, where the Kegent, Uriel, points 
out to him the way to Earth. Satan alights on 
Mount Niphates. 

Book four gives us our first glimpse of Adam 
and Eve in Eden. Satan, discovering from their 
conversation that the Tree of Knowledge has been 
forbidden them under penalty of death, determines 



50 INTRODUCTION 

to make them disobey. Uriel, suspicious of Satan, 
warns the Archangel Gabriel to protect Eden. 
Gabriel sends two angels to the Garden, where 
they find Satan tempting Eve in a dream. They 
bring him before Gabriel, and Gabriel and Satan 
are about to fight when a sign from Heaven checks 
them. Satan takes to his wings. 

In the fifth book, the Almighty sends the 
Archangel Raphael to Adam and Eve to warn 
them against Satan's wiles. Eaphael is hos- 
pitably entertained by the pair, and at Adam's 
request starts to tell the story of Satan's rebellion: 
The trouble began on the day when the Almighty 
commanded all the Host of Heaven to worship his 
Anointed Son. Satan, refusing obedience, ''drew 
his legions after him to parts of the North, and 
there incited them to rebel with him, persuading 
all but only Abdiel, a seraph, who in argument 
dissuades and opposes him, then forsakes him." 

The events of the sixth book are best epitomized in 
the language of Milton's Argument : "Raphael con- 
tinues to relate how Michael and Gabriel were sent, 
forth to battle against Satan and his Angels. The 
first fight described : Satan and his Powers retire 
under night. He calls a council ; invents devilish 
engines, which, in the second day's fight, put 
Michael and his Angels to some disorder ; but they 
at length, pulling up mountains, overwhelmed 
both the force and machines of Satan. Yet, the 
tumult not so ending, God, on the third day, 



INTRODUCTION 51 

sends Messiah his Son, for whom he had reserved 
the glory of that victory. He, in the power of his 
Father, coming to the place, and causing all his 
legions to stand still on either side, with his chariot 
and thunder driving into the midst of his enemies, 
pursues them, unable to resist, towards the wall of 
Heaven; which opening, they leap down with 
horror and confusion into the place of punishment 
prepared for them in the Deep. Messiah returns 
with triumph to his Father. " 

In the seventh book Eaphael goes on to relate 
"how and wherefore this World was first created: 
— that God, after the expelling of Satan and his 
Angels out of Heaven, declared his pleasure to 
create another World, and other creatures to dwell 
therein; sends his Son with glory, and attendance 
of Angels, to perform the work of creation in six 
days: the Angels celebrate with hymns the per- 
formance thereof, and .his reascension into 
Heaven." 

In the eighth book Adam inquires about the 
movements of the stars and planets, "is doubtfully 
answered, and exhorted to search rather things 
more worthy of knowledge." Adam relates to 
Eaphael his own experiences since his creation, 
particularly his first meeting with Eve. Raphael 
repeats his admonition to beware of Satan, and 
departs. 

Book nine tells of Satan's return to Eden, in 
the form of a serpent, to tempt Eve. He finds 



52 INTRODUCTION 

her alone, Adam and Eve having decided to divide 
their labors, and addresses her flatteringly. "Eve, 
wondering to hear the Serpent speak, asks how 
he attained to human speech and such understand- 
ing not till now; the Serpent answers that by 
tasting of a certain tree in the Garden he attained 
both to speech and reason, till then void of both. 
Eve requires him to bring her to the tree, and finds 
it to be the Tree of Knowledge forbidden; the 
Serpent, now grown bolder, with many wiles and 
arguments induces her at length to eat. She, 
pleased with the taste, deliberates a while whether 
to impart thereof to Adam or not ; at last brings 
him of the fruit; relates what persuaded her to 
eat thereof. Adam, at first amazed, but perceiv- 
ing her lost, resolves, through vehemence of love, 
to perish with her, and, extenuating the trespass, 
eats also of the fruit. " They become ashamed and 
reproach one another. 

The tenth book relates that God, learning 
through the Guardian Angels of the transgression 
of Adam and Eve, sends the Son to sentence them. 
Satan returns to Pandemonium ; as he is recount- 
ing his adventures to his comrades, the whole com- 
pany are suddenly transformed into hissing ser- 
pents. Sin and Death, learning of Satan's success, 
build a bridge over Chaos, from Hell to our 
universe, and make their way to Eden. "God 
foretells the final victory of his Son over them, and 
the renewing of all things; but for the present, 



INTRODUCTION 53 

commands his Angels to make several alterations 
in the Heavens and Elements," which bring upon 
the earth "pinching cold and scorching heat," 
bleak winds and pestilent mists. Death introduces 
Discord among the beasts of the earth, who fall to 
devouring one another. Adam and Eve repent and 
supplicate the offended Deity. 

In the eleventh book, "the Son of God presents 
to his Father the prayers of our first parents now 
repenting, and intercedes for them. God accepts 
them, but declares that they must no longer abide 
in Paradise; sends Michael with a band of 
Cherubim to dispossess them. ..." Michael 
descends to Eden, breaks to Adam and Eve the 
news of their banishment, yet of their ultimate 
redemption, then, taking Adam upon a high hill, 
unfolds to him in a vision all that shall happen on 
earth down to the time of the Flood. 

In the twelfth book "The Angel Michael con- 
tinues, from the Flood, to relate what shall 
succeed ; then, in the mention of Abraham, comes 
by degrees to explain who that Seed of the Woman 
shall be which was promised Adam and Eve in the 
Fall: his incarnation, death, resurrection, and 
ascension ; the state of the Church till his second 
coming. Adam, greatly satisfied and recomforted 
by these relations and promises, descends the hill 
with Michael ; wakens Eve, who all this while had 
slept, but with gentle dreams composed to quiet- 
ness of mind and submission. Michael in either 



54 INTRODUCTION 

hand leads them out of Paradise, the fiery sword 
waving behind them, and the Cherubim taking 
their stations to guard the place." 

That portion of Paradise Lost included in the 
present edition, serves, it will be observed, merely 
as an introduction to the matter with which the 
poem mainly concerns itself, viz., the temptation 
and fall of our frail originals, their expulsion from 
Eden, and the formulation of the plan of redemp- 
tion. We are not permitted so much as a glimpse 
of the Earth on which this tragedy is enacted — for 
as the second book draws to an end, our stellar 
universe has just appeared to Satan — a mere speck 
on his horizon. Constructively, then, the value 
of the first and second books appears to be two- 
fold: (1) they furnish a motive for Satan's intru- 
sion in the Garden of Eden ; (2) they open up to 
the reader's imagination the stupendous reaches 
of the Miltonic cosmography, and sweeping from 
his mind all notion of the ordinary physical 
limitations of space and corporeal existence, they 
give scale to the entire poem. 

Yet the contents of these books should not be 
regarded as merely so much preliminary matter: 
they have a unity and a profound significance of 
their own, apart from their reminiscent and pro- 
phetic suggestiveness. The action takes place 
entirely within the bounds of Hell or in the "hoary 
Deep" beyond, and it concerns itself with a single 
subject — the rallying of the broken forces of the 



INTRODUCTION 55 

rebel angels and the settlement of their future 
policy. The only actors are the Fallen Angels and 
other evil spirits, none of whom, with the excep- 
tion of Satan, plays directly any important part in 
subsequent events. In one sense, then, these two 
books stand by themselves as a study in demo- 
nology. 

We have here, however, no commonplace theo- 
logical symbolism. These outcasts from Heaven 
are strangely ennobled: something of their orig- 
inal angelic glory still radiates from them; it 
is impossible to reconcile these luminous and 
majestic beings with the horned and hoofed devils 
of tradition. Supreme above them all, dominating 
the situation from beginning to end by his splendid 
presence, towers the Euined Archangel. Later on 
in the poem, this regal figure is degraded, like the 
rest, to bestiality ; but here Milton cannot disguise 
his admiration for him. Whether or not Milton, 
himself the representative of a lost cause, sym- 
pathized with Satan and his associates as ' 'foiled 
rebels and republicans," as Lowell suggests, 1 need 
not concern us. It is enough that in these two 
books the rebel angels are invested with a dignity 
that makes them of greater interest, as epic per- 
sonages, than any other characters in the entire 
poem. 

As a piece of skillful construction, of artistically 
and consistently developed narrative, Paradise 

1 Works, Riverside ed. , III, 3. 



56 INTRODUCTION 

Lost is not entitled to a high degree of merit. 
To say that the author attempted the impossible 
and failed, is one of the commonplaces of criticism 
Not even a Milton could successfully compass the 
philosophical difficulties of his theme, any more 
than he could reconcile abstract theology with 
poetry. The portion of the poem we are con- 
cerned with, however, presents comparatively few 
incongruities ; the action is fairly simple and the 
characters act on their own responsibility. 

From the point of view of style, too, these 
introductory books deserve particular study. 
Milton sets a high standard for himself in the 
opening lines, but the strain scarcely falters from 
the beginning to the' end. The same fullness of 
harmony is hardly sustained throughout any other 
two consecutive books of the poem. 01 the 
imagery it is impossible to speak adequately. Only 
by successive efforts does the mind perceive the 
difficulty of comprehending the vastness of Milton's 
plan, or of visualizing clearly the shadowy forms 
that rear themselves from the molten surface of the 
lake, and assemble in Pandemonium. Before one 
can picture any part of the scene to one's satis- 
faction, some new simile or chance epithet destroys 
the perspective, and its elements have to be 
regrouped on a larger, but always inadequate scale. 
It is this indefiniteness of outline, this continual 
and unlimited expansion of the field of perception 
by the use of suggestive rather than specific 



INTRODUCTION 57 

terminology, that makes each recurrent reading of 
this part of the poem a fresh delight. 

V. MILTON'S ENGLISH 

The style of Paradise Lost presents some diffi- 
culties to the modern reader that call for a word or 
two of comment. These difficulties arise partly 
from Milton's use of Elizabethan idioms, which 
he generally preferred to those of Dry den's time, 
partly from his fondness for forcing the meaning 
of words derived from the Latin, and particularly 
from his habit of condensing his sentences by all 
sorts of omissions, and of inverting the natural 
order of the thought. Not many actually obsolete 
words and phrases, such as ''burns frore " (ii, 
595), " where champions bold Wont ride in 
armed" (i, 763-4) and "the sounding alchymy " 
(ii, 517), occur in the first two books. More 
numerous and more troublesome are a class of 
words which, though in present use, are employed 
by Milton in an archaic or an unusual sense. 
Such are abject (i, 312), abused (i, 479), admire 
(i, 690), advanced (i, 536), advise (ii, 376), 
afflicted (i, 186), arbitress (i, 785), argument 
(i, 24), assert (i, 25), astonished (i, 266), at- 
tempted (ii, 357), buxom (ii, 842), confer (i, 774), 
conjured (ii, 693), converse (ii, 184), denounced 
(ii, 106), element (ii, 490), event (i, 624), exercise 
(ii, 89), expatiate (i, 774), fact (ii, 124), fail 
(i, 167), fame (i, 651), fatal (ii, 104), frequent 



58 INTRODUCTION 

(i, 797), humane (ii, 109), incense (ii, 94), instinct 
(ii, 937), intend (ii, 457), luxurious (i, 498), 
mansion (i, 268), offend (i, 187), orient (i, 546), 
passion (i, 605), pennons (ii, 933), pernicious 
(i, 282), powers (i, 186), prevented (ii, 467), 
proper (ii, 75), recess (i, 795), mV//i (i, 543), re- 
luctance (ii, 337), remorse (i, 605), row^ (i, 747), 
rwm (i, 46), scope (ii, 127), secret (i, 6), sentence 
(ii, 51), starve (ii, 600), still (i, 165), study 
(i, 107), suhlime (ii, 528), success (ii, 9), sz^s- 
pended (ii, 554), ^mp£ (ii, 404), ft>o& (ii, 554), 
uncouth (ii, 407), unfounded (ii, 829), wn/es 
(i, 68), w^er (i, 72), virtue (i, 320), voluminous 
(ii, 652), warping (i, 341), witnessed (i, 57). 
The reader should look out particularly for words 
of Latin origin, which Milton is apt to use with a 
suggestion of their Latin meaning. 

With Syntax, Milton takes every possible liberty. 
No writer of his time uses greater freedom in the 
omission of subjects, predicates, auxiliaries, pro- 
nouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and all sorts of 
connecting phrases. Examples may be found on 
every page of Paradise Lost: 

His trust was with the Eternal to be deemed 
Equal in strength, and rather than be less 
[He] Cared not to be at all.— ii, 46-8. 

How wearisome 
Eternity so spent in worship paid 
To [one] whom we hate ! — ii, 247-9. 



INTRODUCTION 59 

Or could we break our way 
By force, and [if] at our heels all Hell should rise 
With blackest insurrection, to confound 
Heaven's purest light, yet our great Enemy, 
All incorruptible, would on his throne 
Sit unpolluted.— ii, 134-9. 

But perhaps [to some] 
The way seems difficult and steep to scale 
With upright wing against a higher foe. 
Let such bethink them, etc. — ii, 70-3. 

The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds 
Attest their joy, [so] that hill and valley rings. — ii, 
494-5. 

Through them I mean to pass, 
[Of] That be assured, without leave asked of thee. — 
ii, 685. 

What remains [for] him less. — ii, 443. 

Examples of similar condensations are frequent 
enough in the work of any Elizabethan dramatist. 
In some cases, however, Milton seems to be imi- 
tating certain peculiarities of Latin syntax. These 
imitations are easily accounted for when we remem- 
ber that from his earliest youth Milton had accus- 
tomed himself to writing Latin, both in verse and 
in prose, and that in the years immediately pre- 
ceding the composition of Paradise Lost he had 
been engaged much of the time in dictating letters 
and other state documents in that language. Ex- 
pressions such as " Though all our glory extinct " 
(i, 141), "God and his Son except" (ii, 678), 



60 INTRODUCTION 



>> 



" Though . . . Their children's cries unheard 
(i, 394-5) suggest the Latin ablative absolute; 
" Stood fixed her stately highth " (i, 723), is an 
accusative of extent; " Never, since created Man" 
(i, 573), and "After . . . summons read" 
(i, 797-8) seem to be imitations of a Latin con- 
struction like post hominem creatum; ' ' What 
doubt we " (ii, 94) is like quid dubitamus; " Nor 
did they not perceive " (i, 335), imitates a Latin 
construction with nee non; in "So as not either to 
provoke, or dread New war provoked" (i, 644-5), 
and many similar cases we have something like a 
familiar Latin use of .the participle. In a few 
cases Milton appears to imitate even the Latin 
form of participles of Latin origin, as " expecta- 
tion held His look suspense" (Lat. suspensus — ii, 
417-8). The omission of the -ed termination 
of perfect participles in general is frequent with 
Milton, as with Shakspere: " satiate fury" (i, 179), 
"thoughts more elevate" (ii, 558), "With head 
uplift" (i, 193). 

Sometimes we find a violent change of con- 
struction in the midst of a sentence : 

How oft amidst 
Thick clouds and dark doth Heaven's all-ruling Sire 
Choose to reside, his glory unobscured, 
And with the majesty of darkness round 
Covers his throne, from whence deep thunders roar, 
Mustering their rage, and Heaven resembles Hell ! — 
ii, 263-8. 



INTRODUCTION 61 

We should expect " cover" in place of "covers" 
in line 267, and " so that " in place of " and " in 
line 268. 

If thou beest he— but Oh how fallen ! how changed 
From him, who in the happy realms of light, 
Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine 
Myriads, though bright !— i, 84-7. 

Here the construction demands ''did" rather 
than "didst." 

Unexpected changes of tense are frequent : 

Each at the head 
Levelled his deadly aim ; their fatal hands 
No second stroke intend ; and such a frown 
Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds, etc. 
— ii, 711-4. 

He now prepared 
To speak ; whereat their doubled ranks they bend. 
— i, 615-6. 

He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled 
The assembly, as when hollow rocks retain 
The sound of blustering winds, which all night long 
Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull 
Seafaring men o'erwatched. — ii, 284-8. 

Sometimes Milton affects an inverted arrange- 
ment of words or phrases : 

For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense. — 
ii, 556. 

Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend 
Stood on the brink of Hell and looked awhile.— ii, 
917-8. 



62 INTRODUCTION 

That is to say, "The wary Fiend stood on the 
brink of Hell and looked a while into this wild 
Abyss. ' ' 

Let us not then pursue — 
By force impossible, by leave obtained 
Unacceptable — though in Heaven, our state 
Of splendid vassalage. — ii, 249-52. 

I.e., " Let us not then seek after our state of 
splendid servitude, impossible to obtain by force, 
unacceptable, though it be in Heaven, if obtained 
by leave." 

Now and then the thought is curiously con- 
fused : 

Satisfied 
With what is punished. — ii, 212-3. 

I.e., "with the amount of punishment." 

I know thee not, nor ever saw till now 

Sight more detestable than him and thee. — ii, 

744-5. 

I.e., "a sight so detestable as he and thou. " 

And by what best way, 
Whether of open war or covert guile, 
We now debate. — ii, 40-2. 

I.e., " and what way would be best." 

Retire; or taste thy folly. — ii, 686. 
I.e., " taste the result of thy folly." 



INTRODUCTION 63 

God and his Son except, 
Created thing naught valued he nor shunned. — ii, 
678-9. 

Milton is not to be understood as classing God 
and his Son among created things. 

An apparent interchange of various parts of 
speech is common in Paradise Lost, as in Shak- 
spere and other Elizabethan writers : an adjective 
for a noun, "this essential" (ii, 97), "vast 
abrupt " (ii, 409), "palpable obscure" (ii, 406); 
a verb for a noun, "beyond Compare" (i, 587-8); 
an adjective for an adverb, " To punish endless " 
(ii, 159), " and reasoned high " (ii, 558). Some- 
times a transitive verb is used intransitively : 

What creatures there inhabit. — ii, 355. 

Satan with less toil, and now with ease, 
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light. — ii, 
1041-2. 

Sometimes an intransitive verb, transitively: 

And confer 
Their state-affairs. — i, 774-5. 

* Ere he arrive 

The happy isle?— ii, 409-10. 

Among other peculiar Elizabethan expressions 
are: "With more successful hope" (i, 120) for 
" with more hope of success" ; " Ages of hopeless 
end" (ii, 186), for " ages without hope of end "; 
11 the oblivious pool" (i, 266), for " the pool that 



64 INTRODUCTION 

makes one oblivious"; "conscious terrors" (ii, 
801), for "terrors of which I am conscious" ; "Liken- 
ing his Maker to the grazed ox" (i, 486), that is 
" to the ox whose nature it is to graze" ; " unen- 
vied" (ii, 23), for "unenviable"; "abhorred" 
(ii, 659), for "abhorrent"; "spares to tell thee" 
(ii, 739). 

"His" or "her" are almost invariably used by 
Milton, after the Elizabethan fashion, in place of 
"its," which did not come into general acceptance 
until the end of the seventeenth century. "Its" is 
said to occur but three times in Milton 's poetry : 
Paradise Lost, i, 254; iv, 813; Nativity Ode, 
106. 

Occasionally we find violations of strict gram- 
matical usage, as 

For the mind and spirit remains 
Invincible.— i, 139-40. 

Belial came last, than whom a Spirit more lewd 
Fell not from Heaven.— i, 490-1. 

For that mortal dint, 
Save He who reigns above, none can resist. — ii, 813-4. 

'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires. — i, 346. 

Milton's spelling and punctuation were quite 
arbitrary, hence inconsistencies in this respect 
between various editions of Paradise Lost need 
trouble nobody. Each editor punctuates the text 
to suit himself, and it is customary to adopt 



INTRODUCTION 65 

modern orthography, except in the case of some 
special words like higJith, brigade landship, 
where Milton's spelling has a peculiar phonetic 
value, and other words like ammiral, haralds, 
soldan, sovran, which indicate Milton's preference 
for Italian forms. 

VI. MILTON'S VERSE 

A concise analysis of Milton's blank verse would 
be a hopeless task. The measure of Paradise 
Lost is too delicately modulated and too richly 
varied to be reduced to formulas that may be 
drummed out at the ends of one's fingers, and 
Milton's inconsistency in the use of elisions, con- 
tractions, inversions and other variations makes 
the tabulation of inflexible rules out of the ques- 
tion. Often it is possible to read a given line in 
two ways, either of which would conform to 
Milton's usage elsewhere ; hence the interpretation 
of his verse is sometimes a matter of individual 
taste and judgment. Certain sorts of metrical 
license, however, are habitual enough with Milton 
to warrant their mention here as a kind of test to 
be applied to doubtful lines. 

The normal line in Paradise Lost may be re- 
garded as made up of ten feet, each consisting of 
an unaccented, followed by an accented syllable i 1 



1 In the following examples the symbols w and ' are used to Indi- 
cate stress, not quantity. 



66 INTRODUCTION 

The great | Seraph | ic Lords | and Cher | ubim 
In close | recess | and se | cret con | clave sat. — i, 
794-5. 

Only a small portion of Milton's verses, how- 
ever, conform exactly to this norm. One of the 
commonest variations is the transposition in one or 
more feet of the places for the unaccented and the 
accented syllable: 

Re gions | of sor | row, dole | ful shades, | where 
peace. — i, 65. 

For one | restraint, | lords of | the world | besides. — 
i, 32. 

illu | mine, what | is low | raise and | support. — i, 
23. 

Hov'ring | on wing | under | the cope | of Hell. — i. 
345. 

This transposition may occur in any foot, though 
it is commonest in the first and rarest in the fifth. 
Occasionally a foot consists of two accented 
syllables : 

Rocks, caves, | lakes, fens, | bogs, dens, | and shades | 
of death.— ii, 621. 

With head, | hands, wings, | or feet, | pursues | his 
way. — ii, 949. 



Frequently, of two unaccented syllables : 

From their | Crea | tor, and | transgress | his will.— i, 
31. 

It is probable that Milton, like Shakspere, 1 



See Schmidt's Shakspere Lexicon, Appendix I. 



INTRODUCTION 67 

sometimes availed himself of the privilege of 
changing for metrical purposes the ordinary accent 
of a word. If an adjective or participle of two 
syllables with the accent on the last is followed 
immediately by a strongly accented syllable, the 
accent of the former word appears in some cases 
to be shifted back to the first syllable : 

Next Che | mos, th'ob | scene dread | of Mo | ab's sons. 
— i, 406. 

Encamp | their le | gions, or | with 6b | scure wing. 
— ii, 132. 

In con | fused march | for lorn, | th' adven | t'rous 
bands. — ii, 615. 

Or un | known re | gion, what | remains | him less 
Than un | known dan | gers and | as hard | escape. 
— ii, 443-4. 

His un | couth way, | or spread | his aer | y flight. — ii, 
407. 

This un | couth er | rand sole, | and one | for all. — ii, 

827. 

i 

And sat | as Prin | ces, whom | the su | pre me King. — 
i, 735. 

Our Su | preme Foe | in time | may much | remit. — 
— ii, 210. 

Obdurate (i, 58) is apparently always accented 
by Milton on the second syllable. Of. Paradise 
Lost, vi, 790; xii, 205. 



68 INTRODUCTION 

Many of the elisions and contractions found in 
Paradise Lost are common to all English poetry : 
Disobedience (i, 1) and incorporeal (i, 789) may 
be pronounced as if they were words of four sylla- 
bles; perpetual (i, 131), associates (i, 265) as if 
they were trisyllabic; impious (i, 43), hideous 
(i, 46), sulphurous (i, 171), mightiest (i, 99), 
mightier (i, 149), conquer ov (i, 143), capital 
(ii, 924), suffering (i, 158), sufferance (i, 366), 
glimmering (i, 182), populous (i, 770), popular 
(ii, 313), ominous (ii, 123), -fiery (i, 52), as if they 
were dissyllabic; poiver (i, 103), ruin (i, 91), 
riot (i, 499), trial (i, 366), showers (ii, 4) ; 
towers (ii, 62), flying (ii, 942), (/o% (ii, 162), 
p7?ar (ii, 302), iron (ii, 878), prison (i, 71), 
everc (i, 416), reason (i, 248), fallen (i, 92), mew 
(i, 211), driven (i, 223), as if they were mono- 
syllabic. In ii, 623 evil appears once as a mono- 
syllable and again as a dissyllable. 

Crea | ted ev'l, | for e | vil on | ly good. 



irit and spirits are often monosyllabic (i, 
17, 139, 318), often dissyllabic (i, 101, 609; ii, 
956); likewise Heaven (contrast i, 27 with i, 491). 
If a word ending in a vowel is followed by a 
word beginning with a vowel, the first vowel is 
frequently obscured, though not necessarily quite 
suppressed, in pronunciation: 

11 Th' A 6 | man mount" (i, 15); "th' ethe | real sky" (1 
45); "Th' infer | nal ser | pent" (i, 34); "th' Omnip | 



INTRODUCTION 69 

Stent" (i, 49); "toth' ut | most pole" (i, 74); "Heal | so 
against" (i, 470); "To set | himself | In glo | vy above | 
his peers" (i, 39); "an ig | nomin | y and shame" 
(i, 115); "O'er man | y a fro | zen man \y a fi' | ry 
Alp" (ii, 620); "Be't so | since he" (i, 245) ; "T adore" 
(i, 323); "Strange hor | ror seize | thee 'nd pangs | un- 
felt | before" (ii, 703). 

This elision may take place if the first word, ends 
in w: 

And sor | row and pain (i, 558); 
or if the second word begins with h or wh: 

T have found" (i, 524, 525); "All th' host j of Heav'n 
(ii, 759); 

T' whom thus" (ii, 746); "T' whom Sa | tan, turn | Ing 
(ii, 968). 

In Milton's manuscripts and in the early 
printed editions these elisions and contractions are 
frequently indicated by the spelling : the first edi- 
tion pi Paradise Lost for example has adventrous 
(i, 13); W Ocean (i, 202); W ethereal (i, 45); 
Heav'ns (i, 9) ; Evening (i, 289) ; imbowr (i, 304) ; 
chos'n (i, 318);/^'^ (i, 330). Even the or- 
dinary contractions of the preterite and preterite 
participle in -ed are indicated in the first edition : 
fioiu'd (i, 11) ; unconswtfd (i, 69) ; ceasH (i, 283) ; 
wallet (i, 295); scatterd (i, 304). 

In nearly if not quite every case in which, a line 
in Paradise Lost appears to contain one or more 



70 INTRODUCTION 

feet of three syllables, the extra syllable may be 
disposed of by elision or contraction. Occasion- 
ally, however, a line will be found which has an 
extra syllable at the end : 

Will en | vy whom | the high | est place | expos j es 

ii, 27. 

Of Heav'n | received | us fal | ling; and | the thun | 
der.— i, 174. 

Of sov | ran pow'r, | with aw | ful cer | emo [ ny. — i, 
753. 

In many cases an apparent extra syllable at the 
end may be slurred in pronunciation •} 

And out | of good | still to | find means | of ev'l. — i, 
165. 

Or sub | stance, how | endued, | and what | their 
pow'r. — ii, 356. 

Swarmed and | were straight | ened; till, | the sig | 
nal giv'n. — i, 776. 

Of reb | el An | gels, by | whose aid | as pir'ng.— i,38. 

Strength un | dlmin | Ished, or | eter | nal be'ng. — 
i, 154. 

Free, and | to none | account | able, | preferr'ng.— ii, 
255. 



1 The contractions in the following examples do not represent 
Milton's spelling. 



INTRODUCTION 71 

And possibly: 
And high | disdain | from sense | of in | jiired mer't. — 
i, 98. 

In general, Milton's verse should be read as 
naturally as possible, with the spoken rather than 
the written word in mind. The reader should en- 
deavor to give each word its proper rhetorical 
accent, without distorting its pronunciation in 
order to make it conform to a theoretical metrical 
scheme. Earely some such distortion may be 
necessary, but most of the elisions and contractions 
noted above are matters of ordinary poetical license 
or of everyday speech. 

Milton gives vitality to his measure not only by 
variations in single feet, but by subtle modulations, 
brought about by a skillful adjustment of pauses, 
in the rhythm. Hardly any two successive verses 
will be found with exactly the same ebb and flow ; 
indeed the sense is so frequently carried over from 
one line to the next, and yet again to a third or 
four tli, that the metrical unit is rather a verse - 
group than a single line or a couplet. Not infre- 
quently the movement of the verse is made to 
illustrate the thought, as in the unwieldy line 
(i, 202) in which the Leviathan is described, or 
the famous passage (ii, 876-83) which tells of the 
opening of the gates of Hell. No English poet has 
ever shown more complete mastery over the medium 
he wrought in than Milton, and no poem in our 
language is better worth studying for its superb 



72 INTRODUCTION 

orchestration than Paradise Lost. "Milton almost 
requires a solemn service of music to be played 
before you enter upon him, ,, says Charles Lamb. 
"But he brings his music, to which, who listens, 
had need bring docile thoughts, and purged 



THE VERSE 1 

The measure is English heroic verse, without rime, as 
that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin ; rime 
being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or 
good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention 
of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame 
metre ; graced indeed since by the use of some famous 
modern poets, 2 carried away by custom, but much to 
their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express 
many things otherwise, and for the most part worse, 
than else they would have expressed them. Not with- 
out cause, therefore, some both Italian and Spanish 
poets of prime note have rejected rime both in longer 
and shorter works, as have also, long since, our best Eng- 
lish tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, 
trivial and of no true musical delight ; which consists 
only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the 
sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, 
not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault 
avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all 
good oratory. This neglect then of rime so little is to 

1 This first appeared, together jvith the Arguments 
and the following note by the publisher, in the "fifth 
binding" (1668) of the first edition. (See Masson's 
Life of Milton, vi, 623) :— 

The Printer to the Reader. 
Courteous Reader, there was no Argument at first 
intended to the book ; but for the satisfaction of many 
that have desired it, I have procured it, and withal a 
reason of that which stumbled many others, why the 
poem rimes not. — S. Simmons. 

2 Dryden defended the use of rhyme in his Essay of 
Dramatic Poetry (1667 or 1668) ; he was at this time 
writing rhymed plays. 

73 



74 THE VERSE 

be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to 
vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an ex- 
ample set, the first in English, 1 of ancient liberty 
recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and 
modern bondage of riming. 

1 It is true that Paradise Lost was the first significant 
poem of an epic character to be written in English 
blank verse, if we except Surrey's translation, published 
in 1557, of the second and fourth books of the ^Jneid. 



PAEADISE LOST 
BOOK I 



THE ARGUMENT 

This First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole 
subject: Man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of 
Paradise, wherein he was placed: then touches the 
prime cause of his fall — the Serpent, or rather Satan in 
the Serpent ; who, revolting from God, and drawing to 
his side many legions of Angels, was by the command 
of God driven out of Heaven with all his crew into the 
great Deep. Which action passed over, the Poem 
hastens into the midst of things ; presenting Satan with 
his Angels now fallen into Hell — described here, not in 
the Centre 1 (for heaven and earth may be supposed as 
yet not made, certainly not yet accursed), but in a 
place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos. Here Satan 
with his Angels lying on the burning lake, thunder- 
struck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as 
from confusion ; calls up him who, next in order and 
dignity, lay by him: they confer of their miserable 
fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in 
the same manner confounded. They rise: their num- 
bers ; array of battle ; their chief leaders named, accord- 
ing to the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the 
countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech ; 
comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven ; but 
tells them lastly of a new world and new kind of 
creature to be created, according to an ancient 
prophecy or report in Heaven; for that Angels were 
long before this visible creation was the opinion of 
many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this 
prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to 
a full council. What his associates thence attempt. 
Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built 
out of the Deep : the infernal Peers there sit in 
council. 

1 The Centre, i. e. , of the earth, where Hell was sup- 
posed to be situated. In 1. 686 Milton means by centre 
the earth itself, the centre of the Ptolemaic Universe. 



76 



PAEADISE LOST 

BOOK I 

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste 
Brought death into the world, and all our woe, 
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man 
5 Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, 
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top 
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire 
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed 
In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth 

10 Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill 

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed 
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence 
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, 
That with no middle flight intends to soar 

15 Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues 
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. 
And chiefly Thou, Spirit, that dost prefer 
Before all temples the upright heart and pure, 
Instruct me, for Thou know'st ; Thou from the first 

so Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, 

8.— See Exod., iii, 2, and Deut., iv, 37. 
9. — "Rose in the beginning," not "taught in the 
beginning." 
16.— See Introduction, p. 38. 

77 



78 PARADISE LOST 

Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss, 

And madest it pregnant : what in me is dark 

Illumine, what is low raise and support ; 

That to the highth of this great argument 

I may assert Eternal Providence, 25 

And justify the ways of God to men. 

Say first — for Heaven hides nothing from Thy 
view, 
Nor the deep tract of Hell — say first what cause 
Moved our grand parents, in that happy state, 
Favored of Heaven so highly, to fall off 80 

From their Creator, and transgress his will 
For one restraint, lords of the world besides. 
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt? 

The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile, 
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived ^ 

The Mother of Mankind, what time his pride 
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host 
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring 
To set himself in glory above his peers, 
He trusted to have equalled the Most High, 40 

If He opposed ; and with ambitious aim 
Against the throne and monarchy of God 
Raised impious war in Heaven, and battle proud, 

32. — For; because of. Keightly alters the punctua- 
tion so that for shall mean "except for." 

40-1. — The Serpent trusted to prove a match for the 
Most High in case the latter should oppose his ambitious 
schemes. Macmillan interprets, "If he (Satan) opposed 
God." 



PARADISE LOST 79 

With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power 

r> Hurled headlong naming from the ethereal sky, 
With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition ; there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal fire, 
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. 

so Nine times the space that measures day and night 
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew 
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, 
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom 
Reserved him to more wrath ; for now the thought 

55 Both of lost happiness and lasting pain 

Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes, 
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay, 
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. 
At once, as far as Angels ken, he views 

60 The dismal situation waste and wild : 
A dungeon horrible on all sides round 
As one* great furnace flamed; yet from those flames 
No light ; but rather darkness visible 
Served only to discover sights of woe, 

Go Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes 
That comes to all; but torture without end 
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed 
With ever -burning sulphur unconsumed. 

70 Such place Eternal Justice had prepared 

For those rebellious ; here their prison ordained 

In utter darkness, and their portion set, 

As far removed from God and light of Heaven 



80 PARADISE LOST 

As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole. 

Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell ! 75 

There the companions of his fall, o'erwhelmed 

With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, 

He soon discerns ; and, weltering by his side, 

One next himself in power, and next in crime, 

Long after known in Palestine, and named so 

Beelzebub. To whom the Arch-Enemy, 

And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold 

words 
Breaking the horrid silence, thus began : — 

'If thou beest he — but Oh how fallen! how 
changed 
From him, who in the happy realms of light, 85 

Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst out- 
shine 
Myriads, though bright! — if he whom mutual 

league, 
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope 
And hazard in the glorious enterprise, 
Joined with me once, now misery hath joined 90 

In equal ruin — into what pit thou seest 
From what highth fallen: so much the stronger 

proved 
He with his thunder : and till then who knew 

74.— See Introduction, p. 46. 

84-124.— Under the stress of his emotion, Satan here 
speaks disjointedly, without much regard to syntax; 
some of his verbs have no subjects, and some of his 
nouns no predicates. 



PARADISE LOST 81 

The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those, 

95 Nor wfrat the potent Victor in his rage 
Can else inflict, do I repent, or change, 
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed 

mind, 
And high disdain from sense of injured merit, 
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend, 

100 And to the fierce contention brought along 
Innumerable force of Spirits armed, 
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring, 
Hfs utmost power with adverse power opposed 
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven, 

io.i And shook his throne. What though the field be 
lost? 
All is not lost : the unconquerable will, 
And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
And courage never to submit or yield, 
And what is else not to be overcome : 

no That glory never shall his wrath or might 
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace 

109. — "And whatever else is unconquerable." Verity, 
following the early editions, sets a colon at the end of 
1. 108, and a note of interrogation at the end of 1. 109, 
and interprets: "To retain one's hate, one's courage 
etc. , is not that to be still unsubdued : in what else but 
this lies the test of being not overcome?" Masson sug- 
gests as other possible interpretations : "and what else 
is there that is not to be overcome?" or, "and what is 
there that else (i. e., without the fore-mentioned qual- 
ities) is not to be overcome?" Glory, 1. 110, means the 
glory of being invincibly courageous. 



82 PARADISE LOST 

With suppliant knee, and deify his power 

Who, from the terror of this arm, so late t 

Doubted his empire — that were low indeed ; 

That were an ignominy and shame beneath ns 

This downfall ; since by fate the strength of gods 

And this empyreal substance cannot fail ; 

Since, through experience of this great event, 

In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, 

We may with more successful hope resolve 120 

To wage by force or guile eternal war, 

Irreconcilable to our grand foe, 

Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy 

Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven. ' 

So spake the apostate Angel, though in pain, 125 
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair ; 
And him thus answered soon his bold compeer : — 

' Prince ! Chief of many throned powers ! 
That led the embattled Seraphim to war 
Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds 1 30 

Fearless, endangered Heaven's perpetual King, 
And put to proof his high supremacy, 
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate ! 
Too well I see and rue the dire event 
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat 135 

Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host 
In horrible destruction laid thus low, 

112-4. — "The power of him who, because of the terror 
inspired by this arm, so lately feared for his authority." 
EmpirG=imperium. 

120. — Successful hope; hope of success. 



PARADISE LOST 83 

As far as gods and Heavenly essences 

Can perish : for the mind and spirit remains 

ho Invincible, and vigor soon returns, 

Though all our glory extinct, and happy state 
Here swallowed up in endless misery. 
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now 
Of force believe almighty, since no less 

145 Than such could have o 'erpowered such force as ours) 
Have left us this our spirit and strength entire, 
Strongly to suffer and support our pains, 
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire ; 
Or do him mightier service, as his thralls 

150 By right of war, whate'er his business be, 
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire, 
Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep? 
What can it then avail, though yet we feel 
Strength undiminished, or eternal being 

155 To undergo eternal punishment?' 

Whereto with speedy words the Arch-Fiend 
replied : — 
'Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable, 
Doing or suffering : but of this be sure — 

141. — Though all our glory extinct; an imitation of 
the Latin ablative absolute. See Introduction, p. 59. 

144-5. — Of force such force. Of force, 

"of necessity," rather than "in respect to force"; such 
force has the ordinary meaning. This sort of play upon 
words is not uncommon with Milton. Cf. 1. 642, and 
ii, 39-40. 

154-5. — "Existence made eternal in order that we may 
suffer eternally." 



84 PARADISE LOST 

To do aught good never will be our task, 

But ever to do ill our sole delight, igo 

As being the contrary to his high will 

Whom we resist. If then his providence 

Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, 

Our labor must be to pervert that end, 

And out of good still to find means of evil ; 165 

Which ofttimes may succeed, so as perhaps 

Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb 

His inmost counsels from their destined aim. 

But see ! the angry Victor hath recalled 

His ministers of vengeance and pursuit ito 

Back to the gates of Heaven ; the sulphurous hail, 

Shot after us in storm, o'er blown hath laid 

The fiery surge that from the precipice 

Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder, 

Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage, its 

Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now 

To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep. 

Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn 

Or satiate fury yield it from our foe. 

Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, iso 

The seat of desolation, void of light, 

Save what the glimmering of these livid flames 

Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend 

From off the tossing of these fiery waves ; 

There rest, if any rest can harbor there ; iffi 

And, reassembling our afflicted powers, 

Consult how we may henceforth most offend 

Our Enemy, our own loss how repair, 



PARADISE LOST 85 

How overcome this dire calamity, 

loo What reinforcement we may gain from hope, 
If not what resolution from despair.' 

Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, 
With head nplift above the wave, and eyes 
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides, 

195 Prone on the flood, extended long and large, 
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge 
As whom the fables name of monstrous size, 
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove, 
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den 

aoo By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast 
Leviathan, which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream. 
Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam, 
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff 

205 Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. 
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend 
lay, 

210 Chained on the burning lake ; nor ever thence 
Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will 
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven 
Left him at large to his own dark designs, 
That with reiterated crimes he might 

215 Heap on himself damnation, while he sought 

205. — Many stories of this sort are to be found in 
literature. See, for an example, Siribad the Sailor. 



86 PARADISE LOST 

Evil to others, and enraged might see 

How all his malice served but to bring forth 

Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn 

On Man by him seduced ; but on himself 

Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured. 220 

Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool 
His mighty stature ; on each hand the flames 
Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and, 

rolled 
In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale. 
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight 225 

Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air, 
That felt unusual weight ; till on dry land 
He lights — if it were land that ever burned 
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire, 
And such appeared in hue, as when the force 230 

Of subterranean wind transports a hill 
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side 
Of thundering iEtna, whose combustible 
And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire, 
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, 235 

And leave a singed bottom all involved 
With stench and smoke: such resting found the 

sole 
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate, 
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood 
As gods, and by their own recovered strength, 240 

Not by the sufferance of supernal power. 

'Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,' 
Said then the lost Archangel, 'this the seat 



PARADISE LOST 87 

That we must change for Heaven? this mournful 
gloom 

245 For that celestial light? Be it so, since he 
Who now is sovran can dispose and bid 
What shall be right : farthest from him is best, 
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made 

supreme 
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, 

250 Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail, 
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell, 
Receive thy new possessor, 'one who brings 
A mind not to be changed by place or time. 
The mind is its own place, and in itself 

255 Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of HeavenT~~ 
What matter where, if I be still the same, 
And what I should be, all but less than he 
Wham thunder hath made greater? Here at least 

248. — After equalled, supply "with us"; "from him 
who is in intelligence merely our equal, though our 
superior in physical strength." 

254-5. — Cf . Shakspere's ' 'There is nothing either good 
or bad, but thinking makes it so" {Hamlet, II, ii, 255 ff. ) ; 
"I'll follow thee and make a heaven of hell" (Midsum- 
mer-Night's Dream, II, i, 243). These famous lines are 
paralleled by many passages in our own and other 
literatures. 

257. — All but less than; nearly equal to. "The phrase 
is a combination of 'only less than,' and 'all but equal 
to' " (Beeching, quoted by Verity). Other editors take 
all but less in the sense of "except for the fact that I 
am less." 



88 PARADISE LOST 

We shall be free ; the Almighty hath not built 
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence : 260 

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice 
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell : 
— - Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven. 
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, 
The associates and co-partners of our loss, 265 

Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool, 
And call them not to share with us their part 
In this unhappy mansion, or once more 
With rallied arms to try what may be yet 
Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?' 270 

So Satan spake ; and him Beelzebub 
Thus answered: — 'Leader of those armies bright 
Which but the Omnipotent none could have foiled, 
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge 
Of hope in fears and dangers — heard so oft 275 

In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge 
Of battle when it raged, in all assaults 
Their surest signal — they will soon resume 
New courage and revive, though now they lie 
Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire, 280 

As we erewhile, astounded and amazed : 
No wonder, fallen such a pernicious highth!' 

He scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend 
Was moving toward the shore ; his ponderous shield, 
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, 285 

Behind him cast. The broad circumference 

259-60. — "The Almighty hath not built here a place 
of which he will envy us the possession." 



PARADISE LOST , 89 

Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb 
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
At evening from the top of Fesole, 

290 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. 
His spear — to equal which the tallest pine 
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand — 

295 He walked with, to support uneasy steps 
Over the burning marie, not like those steps 
On Heaven 's azure ; and the torrid clime 
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire. 
Nathless he so endured, till on the beach 

300 Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called 
His legions, Angel forms, who lay entranced, 
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades 
High over-arched embower ; or scattered sedge 

305 Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed 

Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'er- 

threw 
Busiris and his Mem phi an chivalry, 
While with perfidious hatred they pursued 
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 

3io From the safe shore their floating carcases 
And broken chariot -wheels : so thick bestrown, 

304. — Scattered sedge; the Hebrew name for the Red 
Sea means Sea of Sedge. 

305. — The rising and setting of Orion was thought to 
bring stormy weather. 



90 PARADISE LOST 

Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, 

Under amazement of their hideous change. 

He called so loud that all the hollow deep 

Of Hell resounded: — 'Princes, Potentates, 815 

Warriors, the Flower of Heaven — once yours, now 

lost, 
If such astonishment as this can seize 
Eternal Spirits ! Or have ye chosen this place 
After the toil of battle to repose 

Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find 320 

To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven? 
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn 
To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds 
Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood 
With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon 325 

His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern 
The advantage, and descending tread us down 
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts 
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf? 
Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!' 330 

They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung 
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch, 
On duty sleeping found by whom they dread, 
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. 
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight 335 

In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel ; 
Yet to their General's voice they soon obeyed 
Innumerable. As when the potent rod 
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day, 
Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud 340 



PARADISE LOST 91 

Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, 
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung 
Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile: 
So numberless were those bad Angels seen 

345 Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell, 
'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires; 
Till, as a signal given, the uplifted spear 
Of their great Sultan waving to direct 
Their course, in even balance down they light 

350 On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain : 
A multitude like which the populous North 
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass 
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons 
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread 

355 Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands. 

Forthwith, from every squadron and each band, 
Thfe heads and leaders thither haste where stood 
Their great Commander ; godlike shapes, and forms 
Excelling human, princely Dignities, 

360 And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones ; 
Though of their names in Heavenly records now 
Be no memorial, blotted out and rased 
By their rebellion from the Books of Life. 
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve 

365 Got them new names, till, wandering o'er the Earth, 
Through God's high sufferance for the trial of man, 
By falsities and lies the greatest part 

353.5. —The allusion is to the invasion of the Roman 
Empire by the Germanic and Slavic races. The Van- 
dals conquered Carthage in the year 439 A. D. 



92 PARADISE LOST 

Of mankind they corrupted to forsake 

God their Creator, and the invisible 

Glory of him that made them, to transform 870 

Oft to the image of a brute, adorned 

With gay religions full of pomp and gold, 

And devils to adore for deities: 

Then were they known to men by various names, 

And various idols through the heathen world. 375 

Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, 
who last, 
Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch, 
At their great Emperor's call, as next in worth 
Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, 
While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof. 380 

The chief were those who, from the pit of Hell 
Roaming to seek their prey on Earth, durst fix 
Their seats long after next the seat of God, 
Their altars by his altar, gods adored 
Among the nations round, and durst abide 385 

Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned 
Between the Cherubim ; yea, often placed 
Within his sanctuary itself their shrines, 
Abominations ; and with cursed things 
His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned, 390 

And with their darkness durst affront his light. 

373. — Mediaeval theologians sometimes identified the 
fallen angels with heathen, particularly classical 
deities. 

387.— See Exod., xxv, 22. 

388.— See Jer., vii, 30. 



PARADISE LOST 93 

First Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood 

Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears, 

Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, 

395 Their children's cries unheard that passed through 
fire 
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite 
Worshiped in Rabba and her watery plain, 
In Argob and in Basan, to the stream 
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such 

400 Audacious neighborhood, the wisest heart 
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build 
His temple right against the temple of God 
On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove 
The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence 

405 And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell. 
Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's sons, 
From Aroar to Nebo, and the wild 
Of southmost Abarim ; in Hesebon 
And Horonaim, Seon's realm, beyond 

410 The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, 
And Eleale to the Asphaltic pool. 
Peor his other name, when he enticed 
Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile, 
To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe. 

415 Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged 
Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove 
Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate ; 
Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell. 

414.— See Numb., xxv, 1-9. 
418. — See II Kings, xxiii, 



94 PARADISE LOST 

With these came they who, from the bordering flood 

Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts 420 

Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names 

Of Baalim and Ashtaroth — those male, 

These feminine. For Spirits, when they please, 

Can either sex assume, or both ; so soft 

And uncompounded is their essence pure, 425 

Not tied or manacled with joint or limb, 

Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, 

Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they 

choose, 
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, 
Can execute their aery purposes, 430 

And works of love or enmity fulfil. 
For those the race of Israel oft forsook 
Their living Strength, and unfrequented left 
His righteous altar, bowing lowly down 
To bestial gods ; for which their heads as low 435 

Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear 
Of despicable foes. With these in troop 
Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called 
Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns ; 
To whose bright image nightly by the moon 440 

Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs ; 
In Sion also not unsung, where stood 
Her temple on the offensive mountain, built 
By that uxorious king whose heart, though large, 
Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell 445 

To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind, 
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured 
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate 



PARADISE LOST 95 

In amorous ditties all a summer's day, 

450 While smooth Adonis from his native rock 
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood 
Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale 
Infected Sion's daughters with like heat, 
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch 

455 Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, 
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries 
Of alienated Judah. Next came one 
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark 
Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off 

460 In his own temple, on the jgrunsel-edge, 

Where he fell flat, and shamed his worshipers : 
Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man 
And downward fish ; yet had his temple high 
Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast 

465 Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon, 

And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds. 
Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat 
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks 
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. 

470 He also against the house of God was bold : 
A leper once he lost, and gained a king, 
Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew 
God's altar to disparage and displace 
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn 

475 His odious offerings, and adore the gods 

Whom he had vanquished. After these appeared 
A crew who, under names of old renown, 
Osiris, Isis, Or us, and their train, 
471.— See II Kings, v, 1-18 and xvi, 10-12. 



96 PARADISE LOST 

With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused 
Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek 480 

Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms 
Kather than human. Nor did Israel scape 
The infection, when their borrowed gold composed 
The calf in Oreb ; and the rebel king 
Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan, 485 

Likening his Maker to the grazed ox — 
Jehovah, who, in one night, when he passed 
From Egypt marching, equalled with one stroke 
Both her first-born and all her bleating gods. 
Belial came last, than whom a Spirit more lewd 49 ° 
Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love 
Vice for itself. To him no temple stood 
Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he 
In temples and at altars, when the priest 
Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled 495 

With lust and violence the house of God? 
In courts and palaces he also reigns, 
And in luxurious cities, where the noise 
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, 
And injury and outrage ; and when night 500 

Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons 
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. 
Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night 
In Gibeah, when the hospitable door 
Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape. 505 

These were the prime in order and in might; 

483-5.— See I Kings, xii, 19-20, 28-29; Exod., xxxii, 4, 
and xii, 35-36. 
487-9.— See Exod., xii, 29, 



PARADISE LOST 97 

The rest were long to tell, though far renowned 

The Ionian gods — of Javan's issue held 

Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth, 

510 Their boasted parents; — Titan, Heaven's first-born, 
With his enormous brood, and birthright seized 
By younger Saturn ; he from mightier Jove, 
His own and Ehea's son, like measure found ; 
So Jove usurping reigned. These, first in Crete 

sis And Ida known, thence on the snowy top 
Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air, 
Their highest Heaven; or on the Delphian cliff, 
Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds 
Of Doric land ; or who with Saturn old 

520 Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields, 
And o'er the Celtic roamed the utmost isles. 

All these and more came flocking ; but with looks 
Downcast and damp, yet such wherein appeared 
Obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found their 
Chief 

525 Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost 
In loss itself ; which on his countenance cast 
Like doubtful hue. But he, his wonted pride 
Soon recollecting, with high words that bore 
Semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised 

530 Their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears : 
Then straight commands that at the warlike sound 
Of trumpets loud and clarions, be upreared 
His mighty standard. That proud honor claimed 
Azazel as his right, a Cherub tall : 

535 Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled 
The imperial ensign, which, full high advanced, 



98 PARADISE LOST 

Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, 

With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed, 

Seraphic arms and trophies ; all the while 

Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds : 540 

At which the universal host up-sent 

A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond 

Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. 

All in a moment through the gloom were seen 

Ten thousand banners rise into the air, 545 

With orient colors waving; with them rose 

A forest huge of spears ; and thronging helms 

Appeared, and serried shields in thick array 

Of depth immeasurable. Anon they move 

In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood 550 

Of flutes and soft recorders — such as raised 

To highth of noblest temper heroes old 

Arming to battle, and instead of rage 

Deliberate valor breathed, firm and unmoved 

With dread of death to flight or foul retreat ; 555 

Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage, 

With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chaso 

Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain 

From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they, 

Breathing united force with fixed thought, 560 

Moved on in silence to soft pipes that charmed 

Their painful steps 'er the burnt soil ; and now 

Advanced in view they stand, a horrid front 

Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise 

Of warriors old, with ordered spear and shield, 565 

Awaiting what command their mighty chief 



PARADISE LOST 99 

Had to impose. He through the armed files 
Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse 
The whole battalion views — their order due, 

570 Their visages and stature as of gods ; 

Their number last he sums. And now his heart 
Distends with pride, and hardening in his strength 
Glories ; for never, since created man, 
Met such embodied force as, named with these, 

575 Could merit more than that small infantry 

Warred on by cranes : though all the giant brood 
Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined 
That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 
Mixed with auxiliar gods ; and what resounds 

580 In fable or romance of Uther's son, 

Begirt with British and Armoric knights ; 
Ai^d all who since, baptized or infidel, 
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, 
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond; 

585 Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore 

573. — Since created man; see Introduction, p. 60. 

582-7. — Milton mentions in this passage some familiar 
names in the French and Italian Mediaeval romances 
which tell of the conflicts between the Christians and 
the Saracens. Aspramont was near Nice; Montalban, 
in Languedoc; Damasco is Damascus; Trebisond was 
in Cappadocia ; Biserta is near Tunis, and the allusion 
is to the invasion of Spain by the Moors ; Fontarabia 
is in Spain, forty miles from the pass of Roncesvalles, 
where Charlemagne's twelve peers (but not Charle- 
magne himself) are said, in the Song of Roland, to have 
fallen in battle. 



100 PARADISE LOST 

When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 

By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond 

Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed 

Their dread commander. He, above the rest 

In shape and gesture proudly eminent, 590 

Stood like a tower ; his form had yet not lost 

All her original brightness, nor appeared 

Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess 

Of glory obscured : as when the sun new -risen 

Looks through the horizontal misty air 595 

Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, 

In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 

On half the nations, and with fear of change 

Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone 

Above them all the Archangel ; but his face 600 

Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care 

Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows 

Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride 

Waiting revenge. Cruel his eye, but cast 

Signs of remorse and passion, to behold 605 

The fellows of his crime, the followers rather 

(Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned 

Forever now to have their lot in pain ; 

Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced 

Of Heaven, and from eternal splendors flung 610 

For his revolt ; yet faithful how they stood, 

Their glory withered: as, when Heaven's fire 

598-9. — Thomas Tomkyns, an official censor of the 
Press, at first took exception to these lines when Mil- 
ton's manuscript was submitted to him. 



PARADISE LOST 101 

Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, 
With singed top their stately growth, though bare, 

615 Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared 
To speak ; whereat their doubled ranks they bend 
From wing to wing, and half enclose him round 
With all his peers : attention held them mute. 
Thrice he assayed, and thrice, in spite of scorn, 

«20 Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth : at last 
Words interwove with sighs found out their way : — 

1 myriads of immortal Spirits ! Powers 
Matchless, but with the Almighty! — and that strife 
Was not inglorious, though the event was dire, 

625 As this place testifies, and this dire change, 
Hateful to utter. But what power of mind, 
Foreseeing or presaging, from the depth 
Oi knowledge past or present, could have feared 
How such united force of gods, how such' 

630 As stood like these, could ever know repulse? 
For who can yet believe, though after loss, 
That all these puissant legions, whose exile 
Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to reascend, 
Self -raised, and repossess their native seat? 

635 For me, be witness all the host of Heaven, 
If counsels different, or dangers shunned 
By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns 
Monarch in Heaven, till then as one secure 
Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute, 

640 Consent or custom, and his regal state 

Put forth at full, but still his strength concealed; 
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall. 



102 PARADISE LOST 

Henceforth his might we know, and know onr own 

So as not either to provoke, or dread 

New war provoked. Our better part remains 645 

To work in close design, by fraud or guile, 

What force effected not ; that he no less 

. At length from us may find, who overcomes 
~V By force hath overcome but half his foe. 

Space may produce new worlds ; whereof so rife 650 

There went a fame in Heaven that He erelong 

Intended to create, and therein plant 

A generation whom his choice regard 

Should favor equal to the Sons of Heaven. 

Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps 655 

Our first eruption: thither or elsewhere; 

For this infernal pit shall never hold 

Celestial Spirits in bondage, nor the Abyss 

Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts, 

Full counsel must mature. Peace is despaired, 6 «o 

For who can think submission? War, then, war 

Open or understood, must be resolved. ' 

He spake; and, to confirm his words, out-flew 

/ Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs 
Of mighty Cherubim ; the sudden blaze 685 

Far round illumined Hell. Highly they raged 
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms 
Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war, 
Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heaven. 

There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top 670 

Belched fire and rolling smoke ; the rest entire 
Shone with a glossy scurf, undoubted sign 



PARADISE LOST 103 

That in his womb was hid metallic ore, 

The work of sulphur. Thither, winged with speed, 

675 A numerous brigad hastened: as when bands 
Of pioneers, with spade and pickaxe armed, 
Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field, 
Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on, 
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell 

680 From Heaven, for even in Heaven his looks and 
thoughts 
Were always downward bent, admiring more 
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold, 
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed 
In vision beatific. By him first 

685 Men also, and by his suggestion taught, 

Ransacked the Centre, and with impious hands 
Rilled the bowels of their mother Earth 
For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew 
Opened into the hill a spacious wound, 

690 And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire 
That riches grow in Hell ; that soil may best 
Deserve the precious bane. And here let those 
Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell 
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings, 

695 Learn how their greatest monuments of fame, 
And strength, and art, are easily outdone 
By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour 
What in an age they, with incessant toil 

673-4. — All metals were believed in the Middle Ages 
to be generated from sulphur and mercury. 
697. — In an hour; supply "is performed." 



104 PARADISE LOST 

And hands innumerable, scarce perform. 
Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared, 700 

That underneath had veins of liquid fire 
Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude 
With wondrous art founded the massy ore, 
Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion dross. 
A third as soon had formed within the ground 705 
A various mould, and from the boiling cells 
By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook : 
As in an organ, from one blast of wind, 
To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes. 
Anon out of the earth a fabric huge no 

Eose like an exhalation, with the sound 
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet — 
Built like a temple, where pilasters round 
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid 
With golden architrave ; nor did there want 715 

Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven : 
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon, 
Nor great Alcairo, such magnificence 
Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine 
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat 720 

Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove 
In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile 
Stood fixed her stately highth, and straight the 
doors, 

703. — The second edition reads found out in place of 
founded. 

723. — Stood fixed her stately highth; see Introduc- 
tion, p. 60. 



PARADISE LOST 105 

Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide 

725 Within, her ample spaces o'er the smooth 
And level pavement : from the arched roof, 
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row 
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed 
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light 

730 As from a sky. The hasty multitude 

Admiring entered, and the work some praise, 
And some the architect. His hand was known 
In Heaven by many a towered structure high, 
Where sceptred Angels held their residence, 

735 And sat as Princes, whom the supreme King 
Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, 
Each in his Hierarchy, the Orders bright. 
Nor was his name unheard or unadored 
In % ancient Greece ; and in Ausonian land 

740 Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell 

From Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove 
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements: from morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
A summer's day; and with the setting sun 

745 Dropt from the zenith, like a falling star, 

On Lemnos, the iEgaean isle. Thus they relate, 
Erring; for he with this rebellious rout 
Fell long before ; nor aught availed him now 
To have built in Heaven high towers ; nor did he 
scape 

750 By all his engines, but was headlong sent 
With his industrious crew to build in Hell. 
Meanwhile the winged haralds, by command 



106 PARADISE LOST 

Of sovran power, with awful ceremony 
And trumpet's sound, throughout the host pro- 
claim 
A solemn council forthwith to be held 755 

At Pandemonium, the high capital 
Of Satan and his peers. Their summons called 
From every band and squared regiment 
By place or choice the worthiest ; they anon 
With hundreds and with thousands trooping came wo 
Attended. All access was thronged, the gates 
And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall 
(Though like a covered field, where champions bold 
Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair 
Defied the best of Panim chivalry 765 

To mortal combat, or career with lance) 
Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, 
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees 
In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides, 
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive ™ 
In clusters ; they among fresh dews and flowers 
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, 
The suburb of their straw-built citadel, 
New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer 
Their state-affairs. So thick the aery crowd ra 

Swarmed and were straightened; till, the signal 

given, 
Behold a wonder ! they but now who seemed 
In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, 
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 
Throng numberless, like that pygmean race 7 8° 



PARADISE LOST 107 

Beyond the Indian mount ; or faery elves, 
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side 
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, 
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon 

785 Sits arbitress, and near to the Earth 

Wheels her pale course ; they, on their mirth and 

dance 
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear ; 
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. 
Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms 

790 Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large, 
Though without number still, amidst the hall 
Of that infernal court. But far within, 
And in their own dimensions like themselves, 
The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim 

Tor. In close recess and secret conclave sat, 
A thousand demi-gods on golden seats, 
Frequent and full. After short silence then, 
And summons read, the great consult began. 



PAKADISE LOST 
BOOK II 



THE ARGUMENT 

The consultation begun, Satan debates whether an 
other battle be to be hazarded for the recovery of 
Heaven : some advise it, others dissuade. A third pro- 
posal is preferred, mentioned before by Satan, to search 
the truth of that prophecy or tradition in Heaven con- 
cerning another world, and another kind of creature, 
equal, or not much inferior, to themselves, about this 
time to be created. Their doubt who shall be sent on 
this difficult search : Satan, their chief, undertakes alone 
the voyage ; is honored and applauded. The council thus 
ended, the rest betake them several ways and to several 
employments, as their inclinations lead them, to enter- 
tain the time till Satan return. He passes on his 
journey to Hell-gates, finds them shut, and who sat 
there to guard them; by whom at length they are 
opened, and discover to him the great gulf between 
Hell and Heaven; with what difficulty he passes 
through, directed by Chaos, the Power of that place, 
to the sight of this new World which he sought. 



no 



BOOK II 

High on a throne of royal state, which far 
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand 
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, 

5 Satan exalted sat, by merit raised 
To that bad eminence; and, from despair 
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires 
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue 
Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught, 

10 His proud imaginations thus displayed : — 
* Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heaven! 
For since no deep within her gulf can hold 
Immortal vigor, though oppressed and fallen, 
I give not Heaven for lost : from this descent 

15 Celestial Virtues rising will appear 

More glorious and more dread than from no fall, 
And trust themselves to fear no second fate. 
Me though just right, and the fixed laws of Heaven, 
Did first create your leader, next, free choice, a 

20 With what besides, in counsel or in fight, 
Hath been achieved of merit, yet this loss, 
Thus far at least recovered, hath much more 
Established in a safe unenvied throne, 
Yielded with full consent. The happier state 

25 In Heaven, which follows dignity, might draw 

14. — Give not . . . for=do not regard as. 

in 



112 PARADISE LOST 

Envy from each inferior ; but who here 

Will envy whom the highest place exposes 

Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's aim 

Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share 

Of endless pain? Where there is then no good 30 

For which to strive, no strife can grow up there 

From faction ; for none sure will claim in Hell 

Precedence, none whose portion is so small 

Of present pain that with ambitious mind 

Will covet more. With this advantage then 35 

To union, and firm faith, and firm accord, 

More than can be in Heaven, we now return 

To claim our just inheritance of old, 

Surer to prosper than prosperity 

Could have assured us ; and by what best way, 40 

Whether of open war or covert guile, 

We now debate; who can advise may speak.' 

He ceased; and next him Moloch, sceptred king, 
Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest Spirit 
That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by despair. 45 
His trust was with the Eternal to be deemed 
Equal in strength, and rather than be less 
Oared not to be at all ; with that care lost 
Went all his fear : of God, or Hell, or worse, 
He recked not, and these words thereafter spake : — 50 

'My sentence is for open war. Of wiles, 
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those 

47-9. — "Rather than be less, he ceased to care to 
exist. That care for existence once lost, he ceased to 
fear annihilation." 



PARADISE LOST 113 

Contrive who need, or when they need ; not now. 
For while they sit contriving, shall the rest — 

55 Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait 
The signal to ascend — sit lingering here, 
Heaven's fugitives, and for their dwelling-place 
Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame, 
The prison of his tyranny who reigns 

go By our delay? No ! let us rather choose, 
Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once 
O'er Heaven's high towers to force resistless way, 
Turning our tortures into horrid arms 
Against the Torturer ; when to meet the noise 

65 Of his almighty engine he shall hear 
Infernal thunder, and for lightning see 
Bl&ck fire and horror shot with equal rage 
Among his Angels, and his throne itself 
Mixed with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire, 

to His own invented torments. But perhaps 
The way seems difficult and steep to scale 
With upright wing against a higher foe. 
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench 
Of that forgetful lake benumb not still, 

75 That in our proper motion we ascend 
Up to our native seat ; descent and fall 
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late, 
When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear 
Insulting, and pursued us through the deep, 

80 With what compulsion and laborious flight 
We sunk thus low? The ascent is easy then ; 
The event is feared: should we again provoke 



114 PARADISE LOST 

Our stronger, some worse way his wrath, may find 
To our destruction — if there be in Hell 
Fear to be worse destroyed ! What can be worse 85 
Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, con- 
demned 
In this abhorred deep to utter woe ; 
Where pain of unextinguishable fire 
Must exercise us, without hope of end, 
The vassals of his anger, when the scourge 90 

Inexorably, and the torturing hour, 
Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus, 
We should be quite abolished, and expire. 
What fear we then? what doubt we to incense 
His utmost ire? which, to the highth enraged, 95 
Will either quite consume us, and reduce 
To nothing this essential — happier far 
Than miserable to have eternal being ! — 
Or if our substance be indeed divine, 
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst ioo 

On this side nothing ; and by proof we feel 
Our power sufficient to disturb his Heaven, 
And with perpetual inroads to alarm, 
Though inaccessible, his fatal throne : 
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.' ios 

He ended frowning, and his look denounced 

100-1.— At worst On this side nothing; "as badly off as 
we can be without suffering annihilation." Some 
editors set off "at worst" between commas, and inter- 
pret: "To whatever extremities we may be reduced, we 
are bound, at any rate, to escape annihilation." 



PARADISE LOST 115 

Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous 

To less than gods. On the other side up rose 

Belial, in act more graceful and humane ; 

no A fairer person lost not Heaven ; he seemed 
For dignity composed, and high exploit. 
But all was false and hollow ; though his tongue 
Dropt manna, and could make the worse appear 
The better reason, to perplex and dash 

115 Maturest counsels : for his thoughts were low ; 
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds 
Timorous and slothful ; yet he pleased the ear : 
And with persuasive accent thus began : — 
'I should be much for open war, Peers, 

120 As*not behind in hate, if what was urged 
Main reason to persuade immediate war 
Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast 
Ominous conjecture on the whole success ; 
When he who most excels in fact of arms, 

125 In what he counsels and in what excels 
Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair 
And utter dissolution, as the scope 
Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. 
First, what revenge? The towers of Heaven are 
filled 

130 With armed watch, that render all access 
Impregnable : oft on the bordering deep 
Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing 
Scout far and wide into the realm of Night, 
Scorning surprise. Or could we break our way 

135 By force, and at our heels all Hell should rise 



116 PARADISE LOST 

With blackest insurrection, to confound 

Heaven's purest light, yet our great Enemy, 

All incorruptible, would on his throne 

Sit unpolluted, and the ethereal mould, 

Incapable of stain, would soon expel 140 

Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire, 

Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope 

Is flat despair : we must exasperate 

The Almighty Victor to spend all his rage; 

And that must end us, that must be our cure — 145 

To be no more. Sad cure ! for who would lose, 

Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 

Those thoughts that wander through eternity, 

To perish rather, swallowed up and lost 

In the wide womb of uncreated Night, 150 

Devoid of sense and motion? And who knows, 

Let this be good, whether our angry foe 

Can give it, or will ever? How he can 

Is doubtful ; that he never will is sure. 

Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire, 155 

Belike through impotence, or unaware, 

To give his enemies their wish, and end 

Them in his anger, whom his anger saves 

To punish endless? " Wherefore cease we then?" 

Say they who counsel war; "we are decreed, ieo 

Beserved, and destined to eternal woe ; 

Whatever doing, what can we suffer more, 

What can we suffer worse?' ' Is this then worst, 

Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms? 

152. —Let this be good; granting this to be a good thing. 



PARADISE LOST 117 

166 What when we fled amain, pursued and struck 
With Heaven's afflicting thunder, and besought 
The Deep to shelter us? this Hell then seemed 
A refuge from those wounds. Or when we lay 
Chained on the burning lake? that sure was worse. 

ito What if the breath that kindled those grim fires, 
Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage, 
And plunge us in the flames? or from above 
Should intermitted vengeance arm again 
His red right hand to plague us? What if all 

175 Her stores were opened, and this firmament 
Of Hell should spout her cataracts of fire, 
Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall 
One day upon our heads ; while we perhaps 
Designing or exhorting glorious war, 

180 Caught in a fiery tempest, shall be hurled, 
Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey 
Of racking whirlwinds, or forever sunk 
Under yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains; 
There to converse with everlasting groans, 

185 Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved, 

Ages of hopeless end ! This would be worse. 
War therefore, open or concealed, alike 
My voice dissuades : for what can force or guile 
With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye 

190 Views all things at one view? He from Heaven's 
highth 
All these our motions vain sees and derides ; 
Not more almighty to resist our might 
188. — Supply "avail" after guile. 



118 PARADISE LOST 

Than wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles. 
Shall we then live thus vile, the race of Heaven 
Thus trampled, thus expelled to suffer here 195 

Chains and these torments? Better these than 

worse, 
By my advice ; since fate inevitable 
Subdues us, and omnipotent decree, 
The Victor's will. To suffer, as to do, 
Our strength is equal, nor the law unjust 200 

That so ordains : this was at first resolved, 
If we were wise, against so great a foe 
Contending, and so doubtful what might fall. 
I laugh, when those who at the spear are bold 
And venturous, if that fail them, shrink, and fear 205 
What yet they know must follow — to endure 
Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain, 
The sentence of their conqueror. This is now 
Our doom ; which if we can sustain and bear, 
Our Supreme Foe in time may much remit 210 

His anger, and perhaps, thus far removed, 
Not mind us not offending, satisfied 
With what is punished; whence these raging 

fires 
Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames. 
Our purer essence then will overcome 215 

Their noxious vapor, or, inured, not feel; 
Or, changed at length, and to the place conformed 
In temper and in nature, will receive 

201-2. — "All of us who were wise made up our minds 
to this in the first place." 



PARADISE LOST 110 

Familiar the fierce heat; and, void of pain, 

220 This horror will grow mild, this darkness light ; 
Besides what hope the never-ending flight 
Of future days may "bring, what chance, what 

change 
"Worth waiting, — since our present lot appears 
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst, 

225 If we procure not to ourselves more woe. ' 

Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb, 
Counselled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, 
Not peace ; and after him thus Mammon spake : — 
* Either to disenthrone the King of Heaven 

230 We war, if war be best, or to regain 

Our own right lost. Him to unthrone we then 
May hope, when everlasting Fate shall yield 
To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife. 
The former, vain to hope, argues as vain 

235 The latter ; for what place can be for us 

Within Heaven's bound, unless Heaven's Lord 

Supreme 
We overpower? Suppose he should relent, 
And publish grace to all, on promise made 
Of new subjection ; with what eyes could we 

240 Stand in his presence, humble, and receive 
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne 

220. — Light; probably a noun, rather than an adjec- 
tive. 

224. — "From the point of view of happiness, but 
wretched ; yet from the point of view of wretchedness, 
not the worst possible." 



120 PARADISE LOST 

With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead sing 

Forced Halleluiahs ; while he lordly sits 

Our envied sovran, and his altar breathes 

Ambrosial odors and ambrosial flowers, 245 

Our servile offerings? This must be our task 

In Heaven, this our delight. How wearisome 

Eternity so spent in worship paid 

To whom we hate ! Let us not then pursue — 

By force impossible, by leave obtained 250 

Unacceptable — though in Heaven, our state 

Of splendid vassalage ; but rather seek 

Our own good from ourselves, and from our own 

Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess, 

Free, and to none accountable, preferring 255 

Hard liberty before the easy yoke 

Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear 

Then most conspicuous, when great things of small, 

Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse, 

We can create, and in what place soe'er 260 

Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain 

Through labor and endurance. This deep world 

Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst 

Thick clouds and dark doth Heaven's all -ruling 

Sire 
Choose to reside, his glory unobscured, 265 

And with the majesty of darkness round 
Covers his throne, from whence deep thunders roar, 
Mustering their rage, and Heaven resembles Hell ! 
As he our darkness, cannot we his light 
Imitate when we please? This desert soil 270 



PARADISE LOST 121 

Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold; 
Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise 
Magnificence ; and what can Heaven show more? 
Our torments also may in length of time 

275 Become our elements, these piercing fires 
As soft as now severe, our temper changed 
Into their temper ; which must needs remove 
The sensible of pain. All things invite 
To peaceful counsels, and the settled state 

280 Of order, how in safety best we may 
Compose our present evils, with regard 
Of what we are and where, dismissing quite 
All thoughts of war. Ye have what I advise.' 
He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled 

285 The assembly, as when hollow rocks retain <r 

The sound of blustering winds, which all night 

long 
Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull 
Seafaring men o'erwatched, whose bark by chance, 
Or pinnace, anchors in a craggy bay 

290 After the tempest : such applause was heard 
As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleased, 
Advising peace ; for such another field 
They dreaded worse than Hell ; so much the fear 
Of thunder and the sword of Michael 

295 Wrought still within them ; and no less desire 
To found this nether empire, which might rise, 
By policy, and long process of time, 
In emulation opposite to Heaven. 
282. — The second edition reads were for where. 



122 PARADISE LOST 

Which when Beelzebub perceived, than whom, 
Satan except, none higher sat, with grave 300 

Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed 
A pillar of state ; deep on his front engraven 
Deliberation sat and public care ; 
And princely counsel in his face yet shone, 
Majestic, though in ruin. Sage he stood, 305 

With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies ; his look 
Drew audience and attention still as night 
Or summer's noontide air, while thus he spake: — 
'Thrones and Imperial Powers, Offspring of 3io 

Heaven, 
Ethereal Virtues ! or these titles now 
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be called 
Princes of Hell? for so the popular vote 
Inclines — here to continue, and build up here 
A growing empire ; doubtless ! while we dream, 815 
And know not that the King of Heaven hath 

doomed 
This place our dungeon — not our safe retreat 
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt 
From Heaven's high jurisdiction, in new league 
Banded against his throne, but to remain 320 

In strictest bondage, though thus far removed, 
Under the inevitable curb, reserved 

302. — A pillar of state; probably in the sense of the 
Ciceronian columen reipublicce. (Sest. 8, 19), and of the 
Shaksperean "pillars of the state" (II Hen. VI, I, i, 75), 
rather than of "stately pillar." 



PARADISE LOST 123 

His captive multitude. For he, be sure, 

In higlith or depth, still first and last will reign 

885 Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part 
By our revolt, but over Hell extend 
His empire, and with iron sceptre rule 
Us here, as with his golden those in Heaven. 
What sit we then projecting peace and war? 

330 War hath determined us, and foiled with loss 
Irreparable ; terms of peace yet none 
Vouchsafed or sought ; for what peace will be given 
To us enslaved, but custody severe, 
And stripes, and arbitrary punishment 

335 Inflicted? and what peace can we return, 
But, to our power, hostility and hate, 
Untamed reluctance, and revenge, though slow, 
Yet ever plotting how the Conqueror least 
May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice 

340 In doing what we most in suffering feel? 
Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need 
With dangerous expedition to invade 
Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege, 
Or ambush from the Deep. What if we find 

345 Some easier enterprise? There is a place 
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven 
Err not), another World, the happy seat 
Of some new race called Man, about this time 
To be created like to us, though less 

336. — To our power; to the best of our ability. Note 
the striking phraseology (What peace . . . But . . . 
hostility and hate), and compare 11. 678-9. 



124 PARADISE LOST 

In power and excellence, but favored more sso 

Of him who rules above ; so was his will 
Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath 
That shook Heaven's whole circumference, con 

firmed. 
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn 
What creatures there inhabit, of what mould 355 

Or substance, how endued, and what their power, 
And where their weakness : how attempted best, 
By force or subtlety. Though Heaven be shut, 
And Heaven's high Arbitrator sit secure 
In his own strength, this place may lie exposed, 360 
The utmost border of his kingdom, left 
To their defence who hold it ; here, perhaps, 
Some advantageous act may be achieved 
By sudden onset : either with Hell-fire 
To waste his whole creation, or possess 365 

All as our own, and drive, as we are driven, 
The puny habitants ; or if not drive, 
Seduce them to our party, that their God 
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand 
Abolish his own works. This would surpass 370 

Common revenge, and interrupt his joy 
In our confusion, and our joy upraise 
In his disturbance ; when his darling Sons, 
Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse 
Their frail original, and faded bliss — 375 

351-3. — Here as often, Milton applies to Scriptural 
matters the terminology of classical mythology. Gods 
must mean "angels." Cf i, 116; i, 148; ii, 391. The 
allusion to the nod of Jove that shakes Olympus, is 
obvious. See Iliad, i, 528 ff. 



PARADISE LOST 125 

Faded so soon ! Advise if this be worth 
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here 
Hatching vain empires.' Thus Beelzebub 
Pleaded his devilish counsel, first devised 

380 By Satan, and in part proposed ; for whence, 
But from the author of all ill, could spring 
So deep a malice, to confound the race 
Of Mankind in one root, and Earth with Hell 
To mingle and involve, done all to spite 

385 The great Creator? But their spite still serves 
His glory to augment. The bold design 
Pleased highly those infernal States, and joy 
Sparkled in all their eyes ; with full assent 
They vote : whereat his speech he thus renews : — 

390 'Well have ye judged, well ended long debate, 
Synod of gods ! and, like to what ye are, 
Great things resolved ; which from the lowest deep 
AVill once more lift us up, in spite of fate, 
Nearer our ancient seat — perhaps in view 

395 Of those bright confines, whence, with neighboring 
arms 
And opportune excursion, we may chance 
Re-enter Heaven ; or else in some mild zone 
Dwell not unvisited of Heaven's fair light, 
Secure, and at the brightening orient beam 

400 Purge off this gloom ; the soft delicious air, 
To heal the scar of these corrosive fires, 
Shall breathe her balm. But first, whom shall we 

send 
In search of this new world? whom shall we find 



126 PARADISE LOST 

Sufficient? who shall tempt with wandering feet 

The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss, 405 

And through the palpable obscure find out 

His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight, 

Upborne, with indefatigable wings 

Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive 

The happy isle? What strength, what art, can then 410 

Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe 

Through the strict senteries and stations thick 

Of Angels watching round? Here he had need 

All circumspection, and we now no less 

Choice in our suffrage ; for on whom we send, 415 

The weight of all, and our last hope, relies. ' 

This said, he sat ; and expectation held 
His look suspense, awaiting who appeared 
To second, or oppose, or undertake 
The perilous attempt ; but all sat mute, 420 

Pondering the danger with deep thoughts ; and each 
In other's countenance read his own dismay, 
Astonished. None among the choice and prime 
Of those Heaven -warring champions could be found 
So hardy as to proffer or accept, 425 

Alone, the dreadful voyage ; till at last 
Satan, whom now transcendent glory raised 
Above his fellows, with monarchal pride 
Conscious of highest worth, unmoved thus spake : — 
1 Progeny of Heaven ! Empyreal Thrones ! 430 

"With reason hath deep silence and demur 
Seized us, though undismayed. Long is the way 
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light ; 



PARADISE LOST 127 

Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire, 
435 Outrageous to devour, immures us round 

Ninefold ; and gates of burning adamant, 

Barred over us, prohibit all egress. 

These passed, if any pass, the void profound 

Of unessential Night receives him next, 
440 Wide-gaping, and with utter loss of being 

Threatens him, plunged in that abortive gulf. 

If thence he scape into whatever world, 

Or unknown region, what remains him less 

Than unknown dangers and as hard escape? 
445 But I should ill become this throne, Peers, 

And this imperial sovranty, adorned 

With splendor, armed with power, if aught pro- 
posed 

And judged of public moment, in the shape 

Of difficulty or danger, could deter 
450 Me from attempting. Wherefore do I assume 

These royalties, and not refuse to reign, 

Kefusing to accept as great a share 

Of hazard as of honor, due alike 

To him who reigns, and so much to him due 
'*"> 5 Of hazard more, as he above the rest 

High honored sits? Go therefore, mighty Powers, 

Terror of Heaven, though fallen ; intend at home, 

438. — Profound is the noun, Cf. Lucretius, i, 1101, 
inane profundum. Cf. also 1. 980; and 1. 829, where 
void may be the adjective, and immense (Lat. 
immensum) the noun. 

452. — Refusing; if I refuse. 



128 PARADISE LOST 

While here shall be our home, what best may ease 

The present misery, and render Hell 

More tolerable ; if there be cure or charm 460 

To respite, or deceive, or slack the pain 

Of this ill mansion ; intermit no watch 

Against a wakeful foe, while I abroad 

Through all the coasts of dark destruction seek 

Deliverance for us all: this enterprise 465 

None shall partake with me.' Thus saying, rose 

The Monarch, and prevented all reply; 

Prudent, lest, from his resolution raised, 

Others among the chief might offer now 

(Certain to be refused) what erst they feared, 470 

And, so refused, might in opinion stand 

His rivals, winning cheap the high repute 

Which he through hazard huge must earn. But they 

Dreaded not more the adventure than his voice 

Forbidding ; and at once with him they rose ; 475 

The rising all at once was as the sound 

Of thunder heard remote. Towards him they bend 

With awful reverence prone ; and as a god 

Extol him equal to the Highest in Heaven. 

Nor failed they to express how much they praised 480 

That for the general safety he despised 

His own ; for neither do the Spirits damned 

468-9. — "Lest others high in authority, encouraged by 
his resolution, might offer. " 

482-5. — "Not even devils are void of all good qualities, 
so no bad man need pride himself on any virtuous deed 
he may have performed from selfish motives." 



PARADISE LOST 129 

Lose all their virtue, — lest bad men should boast 
Their specious deeds on Earth, which glory excites, 

485 Or close ambition varnished o'er with zeal. 

Thus they their doubtful consultations dark 
Ended, rejoicing in their matchless Chief; 
As when from the mountain-tops the dusky clouds 
Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspread 

490 Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element 

Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower; 
If chance the radiant sun with farewell sweet 
Extend his evening beam, the fields revive, 
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds 

495 Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings. 
shame to men ! Devil with devil damned 
Firm concord holds ; men only disagree 
Of creatures rational, though under hope 
Of heavenly grace ; and, God proclaiming peace, 

500 Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife 
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars, 
Wasting the Earth, each other to destroy : 
As if (which might induce us to accord) 
Man had not hellish foes enow besides, 

505 That day and night for his destruction wait ! 

The Stygian council thus dissolved ; and forth 
In order came the grand Infernal Peers ; 
Midst came their mighty Paramount, and seemed 
Alone the antagonist of Heaven, nor less 

510 Than Hell's dread Emperor, with pomp supreme, 
And god-like imitated state ; him round 
A globe of fiery Seraphim enclosed 



130 PARADISE LOST 

With bright emblazonry, and horrent arms, 

Then of their session ended they bid cry 

With trumpet's regal sound the great result: 515 

Toward the four winds four speedy Cherubim 

Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy, 

By har aid's voice exjolained; the hollow Abyss 

Heard far and wide, and all the host of Hell 

With deafening shout returned them loud acclaim. 520 

Thence more at ease their minds, and somewhat 

raised 
By false presumptuous hope, the ranged powers 
Disband; and, wandering, each his several way 
Pursues, as inclination or sad choice 
Leads him perplexed, where he may likeliest find 585 
Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain 
The irksome hours, till his great Chief return. 
Part on the plain, or in the air sublime, 
Upon the wing or in swift race contend, 
As at the Olympian games or Pythian fields ; 530 

Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal 
With rapid wheels, or fronted brigads form: 
As when, to warn proud cities, war appears 

533. — Macmillan quotes Josephus, who says that when 
Jerusalem was about to be taken by Titus, "before 
sunset chariots were seen in the air, and troops of sol- 
diers in their armour running about among the clouds 
and besieging cities." (Jewish War, Bk. VI, ch. V, 
Bohn ed., v, 106.) See also Shakspere's Julius Caesar, 
II, ii 19-23. In 11. 708-11, Milton alludes to the 
common belief in the portentous significance of 
comets. 



PARADISE LOST 131 

Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush 

535 To battle in the clouds ; before each van 

Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their 

spears, 
Till thickest legions close ; with feats of arms 
From either end of Heaven the welkin burns. 
Others, with vast Typhoean rage more fell, 

540 Kend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air 
In whirlwind ; Hell scarce holds the wild uproar : 
As when Alcides, from (Echalia crowned 
With conquest, felt the envenomed robe, and tore 
Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines, 

545 And Lichas from the top of (Eta threw 
Into the Euboic sea. Others, more mild, 
Eetreated in a silent valley ,*sing 
With notes angelical to many a harp 
Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall 

550 By doom of battle ; and complain that Fate 
Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance. 
Their song was partial, but the harmony 
(What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?) 
Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment 

555 The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet 
(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense) 
Others apart sat on a hill retired, 
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high 

557.— Milton here appears to ridicule the Schoolmen's 
endless discussions of the freedom of the human will, 
though elsewhere he treats the matter seriously. See, 
for example, Bk. iii, 96-128. 



132 PARADISE LOST 

Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 

Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute; 560 

And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. 

Of good and evil much they argued then, 

Of happiness and final misery, 

Passion and apathy, and glory and shame, 

Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy! — 565 

Yet with a pleasing sorcery could charm 

Pain for a while or anguish, and excite 

Fallacious hope, or arm the obdured breast 

With stubborn patience as with triple steel. 

Another part, in squadrons and gross bands, 5?o 

On bold adventure to discover wide 

That dismal world, if any clime perhaps 

Might yield them easier habitation, bend 

Four ways their flying march, along the banks 

Of four infernal rivers that disgorge 575 

Into the burning lake their baleful streams : 

Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate ; 

Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep ; 

Cocytus, named of lamentation loud 

Heard on the rueful stream ; fierce Phlegethon, 580 

Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. 

Far off from these a slow and silent stream, 

Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls 

Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks 

Forthwith his former state and being forgets, 585 

Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain. 

559-60. — Milton often heightens his effects by skillful 
repetition. Cf. 11. 599, 1021-2. 



PARADISE LOST 133 

Beyond this flood a frozen continent 

Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms 

Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land 

590 Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems 
Of ancient pile ; all else deep snow and ice, 
A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog 
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, 
Where armies whole have sunk : the parching air 

595 Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire. 
Thither, by harpy-footed Furies haled, 
At certain revolutions all the damned 
Are brought ; and feel by turns the bitter change 
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, 

coo From beds of raging fire to starve in ice 

Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine 
Immovable, infixed, and frozen round 
Periods of time ; thence hurried back to fire. 
They ferry over this Lethean sound 

cos Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment, 
And wish and struggle, as they pass to reach 
The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose 
In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe, 
All in one moment, and so near the brink ; 

6io But Fate withstands, and, to oppose the attempt 
Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards 
The ford, and of itself the water flies 
All taste of living wight, as once it fled 
The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on 

615 In confused march forlorn, the adventurous bands, 
With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast, 



134 PARADISE LOST 

Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found 

No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale 

They passed, and many a region dolorous, 

'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, 620 

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of 

death — 
A universe of death, which God by curse 
Created evil, for evil only good ; 
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds, 
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, 025 

Abominable, inutterable, and worse 
Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, 
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire. 

Meanwhile the Adversary of God and Man, 
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design, 630 
Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of Hell 
Explores his solitary flight ; sometimes 
He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left ; 
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars 
Up to the fiery concave towering high. 635 

As when far off at sea a fleet descried 
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds 
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles 
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring 
Their spicy drugs ; they on the trading flood, < 1 • 

Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape, 

623. — Good; serviceable. 

636-43. — Satan is compared to a compact ("close sail- 
ing") fleet driven by the trade- winds ("equinoctial 
winds," "trading flood") through the Indian Ocean 
("wide Ethiopian") — a fleet so far away that it appears 
to hang in the clouds. 



PARADISE LOST 135 

Ply stemming nightly toward the pole : so seemed 
Far off the flying Fiend. At last appear 
Hell -bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, 

645 And thrice threefold the gates ;three folds were brass, 
Three iron, three of adamantine rock 
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, 
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat 
On either side a formidable Shape. 

650 The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, 
But ended foul in many a scaly fold 
Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed 
With mortal sting. About her middle round 
A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked 

655 With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung 
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep 
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb, 
And kennel there, yet there still barked and howled 
Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these 

660 Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts 
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore ; 
Nor uglier follow the night hag, when, called 
In secret, riding through the air she comes, 
Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance 

662-6. — It is not necessary to suppose that Milton had 
in mind any individual "night-hag," though it is pos- 
sible that Hecate is meant. The partiality of witches 
for "infant blood" is well known. Lapland sorcerers 
were famous all over Europe. It was believed that 
eclipses could be caused by magic (cf. i, 785-6). Con- 
versely, a time of eclipse was particularly favorable to 
sorcery. 



136 PARADISE LOST 

With Lapland witches, while the laboring moon 665 

Eclipses at their charms. The other Shape — 

If shape it might be called that shape had none 

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb; 

Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, 

For each seemed either — black it stood as Night, gto 

Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, 

And shook a dreadful dart ; what seemed his head 

The likeness of a kingly crown had on. 

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat 

The monster moving onward came as fast, 675 

With horrid strides ; Hell trembled as he strode. 

The undaunted Fiend what this might be 

admired — 
Admired, not feared ; God and his Son except, 
Created thing naught valued he nor shunned — 
And with disdainful look thus first began : — 680 

* Whence and what art thou, execrable Shape, 
That darest, though grim and terrible, advance 
Thy miscreated front athwart my way 
To yonder gates? Through them I mean to pass, 
That be assured, without leave asked of thee. G85 

Retire ; or taste thy folly, and learn by proof, 
Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits of Heaven. ' 
To whom the Goblin, full of wrath, replied : — 

678-9. — God and his son except, is an imitation of the 
Latin ablative absolute. It will be noted that if Milton's 
language were taken literally, he would appear to 
include God and His Son among created things. 

686.— Thy folly; the result of thy folly. 



PARADISE LOST 137 

'Art thou that Traitor- Angel, art thou he 

690 Who first broke peace in Heaven and faith, till 
then 
Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms 
Drew after him the third part of Heaven's sons, 
Conjured against the Highest, for which both thou 
And they, outcast from God, are here condemned 

695 To waste eternal days in woe and pain? 

And reckon 'st thou thyself with Spirits of Heaven, 
Hell-doomed, and breath 'st defiance here and scorn, 
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more, 
Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment, 

7oo False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings, 
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue 
Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart 
Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before/ 
So spake the grisly Terror, and in shape, 

705 So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold 
More dreadful and deform. On the other side, 
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood 
Unterrified, and like a comet burned, 
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge 

7io In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair 
Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head 
Levelled his deadly aim ; their fatal hands 
~No second stroke intend ; and such a frown 

692.— See Rev. xii, 4. 

697. — Hell-doomed, hence not to be reckoned among 
the "spirits of heaven"; a retort to Satan's Hell-born, 
1. 687. 



138 PARADISE LOST 

Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds, 

With Heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on 715 

Over the Caspian, then stand front to front 

Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow 

To join their dark encounter in mid-air : — 

So frowned the mighty combatants, that Hell 

Grew darker at their frown ; so matched they stood ; 720 

For never but once more was either like 

To meet so great a foe. And now great deeds 

Had been achieved, whereof all Hell had rung, 

Had not the snaky Sorceress that sat 

Fast by Hell -gate and kept the fatal key, 725 

Kisen, and with hideous outcry rushed between. 

'0 father, what intends thy hand,' she cried, 
'Against thy only son? What fury, son, 
Possesses thee to bend that mortal dart 
Against thy father's head? and know'st for whom? 730 
For him who sits above, and laughs the while 
At thee ordained his drudge, to execute 
Whate'er his wrath, which he calls justice, bids— 
His wrath, which one day will destroy ye both!' 

She spake, and at her words the hellish Pest 735 
Forbore : then these to her Satan returned : — 

'So strange thy outcry, and thy words so strange 

721-2.— Cf. I Cor. xv, 25-26. Perhaps Milton has in 
mind the "harrowing of Hell," as described in the 
apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. 

730. — And know'st for whom, is sometimes printed as 
an exclamation. The sense is about the same either 
way ; she simply wishes to remind Death that he serves 
the Almighty. 



PARADISE LOST 139 

Thou interposest, that my sudden hand, 
Prevented, spares to tell thee yet by deeds 

740 What it intends, till first I know of thee 

What thing thou art, thus double -formed, and why, 
In this infernal vale first met, thou call'st 
Me father, and that phantasm call'st my son. 
I know thee not, nor ever saw till now 

"45 Sight more detestable than him and thee. ' 

To whom thus the Portress of Hell-gate replied : — 
'Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem 
Now in thine eye so foul? once deemed so fair 
In Heaven, when at the assembly, and in sight 

"50 Of all the Seraphim with thee combined 
In bold conspiracy against Heaven's King, 
All on a sudden miserable pain 
Surprised thee ; dim thine eyes, and dizzy swum 
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast 

T55 Threw forth, till on the left side opening wide, 
Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright, 
Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed, 
Out of thy head I sprung. Amazement seized 
All the host of Heaven : back they recoiled afraid 

760 At first, and called me Sin, and for a sign 
Portentous held me; but, familiar grown, 
I pleased, and with attractive graces won 
The most averse ; thee chiefly, who full oft 
Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing 

765 Becam'st enamoured; and such joy thou took'st 

758. — An obvious reminiscence of the classical 
account of the birth of Minerva. 



140 PARADISE LOST 

With me in secret, that my womb conceived 

A growing burden. Meanwhile war arose, 

And fields were fought in Heaven; wherein 

remained 
(For what could else?) to our Almighty Foe 
Clear victory, to our part loss and rout 770 

Through all the Empyrean. Down they fell, 
Driven headlong from the pitch of Heaven, down 
Into this deep ; and in the general fall 
I also : at which time this powerful key 
Into my hands was given, with charge to keep 775 

These gates forever shut, which none can pass 
Without my opening. Pensive here I sat 
Alone ; but long I sat not, till my womb, 
Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown, 
Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes. 780 

At last this odious offspring whom thou seest, 
Thine own begotten, breaking violent way, 
Tore through my entrails, that, with fear and pain 
Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew 
Transformed; but he, my inbred enemy, 785 

Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart, 
Made to destroy. I fled, and cried out Death! 
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed 
From all her caves, and back resounded Death! 
I fled; but he pursued (though more, it seems, 790 
Inflamed with lust than rage) and, swifter far, 
Me overtook, his mother, all dismayed, 
And, in embraces forcible and foul 
Engendering with me, of that rape begot 



PARADISE LOST 141 

?95 These yelling monsters, that with ceaseless cry 
Surround me, as thou saw'st, hourly conceived 
And hourly born, with sorrow infinite 
To me; for, when they list, into the womb 
That bred them they return, and howl, and gnaw 

800 My bowels, their repast; then, bursting forth 
Afresh, with conscious terrors vex me round, 
That rest or intermission none I find. 
Before mine eyes in opposition sits 
Grim Death, my son and foe, who sets them on, 

805 And me, his parent, would full soon devour 
For want of other prey, but that he knows 
His end with mine involved, and knows that I 
Should prove a bitter morsel, and his bane, 
Whenever that shall be : so Fate pronounced. 

sio But thou, father, I forewarn thee, shun 
His deadly arrow ; neither vainly hope 
To be invulnerable in those bright arms, 
Though tempered heavenly; for that mortal dint, 
Save He who reigns above, none can resist.' 

815 She finished ; and the subtle Fiend his lore 
Soon learned, now milder, and thus answered 
smooth : — 
'Dear daughter — since thou claim 'st me for thy 
she, 
And my fair son here show'st me, the dear pledge 
Of dalliance had with thee in Heaven, and joys 

820 Then sweet, now sad to mention, through dire 
change 
Befallen us unforeseen, unthought of — know, 



142 PARADISE LOST 

I come no enemy, but to set free 

From out thia dark and dismal house of pain 

Both him and thee, and all the Heavenly host 

Of Spirits that, in our just pretences armed, 825 

Fell with us from on high. From them I go 

This uncouth errand sole, and one for all 

Myself expose, with lonely steps to tread 

The unfounded Deep, and through the void 

immense 
To search with wandering quest a place foretold sso 
Should be — and by concurring signs, ere now 
Created vast and round — a place of bliss 
In the purlieus of Heaven ; and therein placed 
A race of upstart creatures, to supply 
Perhaps our vacant room, though more removed, sss 
Lest Heaven, surcharged with potent multitude, 
Might hap to move new broils. Be this, or aught 
Than this more secret, now designed, I haste 
To know; and, this once known, shall soon return, 
And bring ye to the place where thou and Death 840 
Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen 
Wing silently the buxom air, embalmed 
With odors : there ye shall be fed and filled 
Immeasurably ; all things shall be your prey. ' 

He ceased ; for both seemed highly pleased, and 845 

Death 
Grinned horrible a ghastly smile, to hear 
His famine should be filled, and blessed his maw 
Destined to that good hour. No less rejoiced 
His mother bad, and thus bespake her sire ; — 



PARADISE LOST 143 

850 'The key of this eternal pit, by due 

And by command of Heaven's all-powerful 

King, 
I keep, by Him forbidden to unlock 
These adamantine gates ; against all force 
Death ready stands to interpose his dart, 

855 Fearless to be o'ermatched by living might. 
But what owe I to His commands above, 
Who hates me, and hath hither thrust me down 
Into this gloom of Tartarus profound, 
To sit in hateful office here confined, 

860 Inhabitant of Heaven and Heavenly -born, 
Here in perpetual agony and pain, 
With terrors and with clamors compassed round 
Of mine own brood, that on my bowels feed? 
Thou art my father, thou my author, thou 

865 My being gav'st me; whom should I obey 

But thee? whom follow? Thou wilt bring me soon 
To that new world of light and bliss, among 
The gods who live at ease, where I shall reign 
At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems 

870 Thy daughter and thy darling, without end. ' 
Thus saying, from her side the fatal key, 
Sad instrument of all our woe, she took ; 
And, towards the gate rolling her bestial train, 
Forthwith the huge portcullis high up-drew, 

875 Which but herself not all the Stygian Powers 

Could once have moved; then in the key-hole 
turns 

855. — Might; the third edition reads wight. 



144 PARADISE LOST 

The intricate wards, and every bolt and bar 

Of massy iron or solid rock with ease 

Unfastens : on a sndden open fly, 

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, 880 

The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate 

Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook 

Of Erebus. She opened; but to shut 

Excelled her power : the gates wide open stood, 

That with extended wings a bannered host, 885 

Under spread ensigns marching, might pass 

through 
With horse and chariots ranked in loose array ; 
So wide they stood, and like a furnace-mouth 
Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame. 
Before their eyes in sudden view appear 890 

The secrets of the hoary Deep, a dark 
Illimitable ocean, without bound, 
Without dimension; where length, breadth, and 

highth, 
And time, and place, are lost; where eldest 

Night 
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 895 

Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise 
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. 



879-83. — Contrast the description of the opening of the 
gates of Heaven, Bk. vii, 205 ff : 

Heaven opened wide 
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound 
On golden hinges moving. 



PARADISE LOST 145 

For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions 

fierce, 
Strive here for mastery, and to battle bring 

900 Their embryon atoms ; they around the flag 
Of each his faction, in their several clans, 
Light -armed or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift, or slow, 
Swarm populous, unnumbered as the sands 
Of Barca or Cyrene's torrid soil, 

90s Levied to side with warring winds, and poise 

Their lighter wings. To whom these most adhere, 
He rules a moment ; Chaos umpire sits, 
And by decision more embroils the fray r 
By which he reigns ; next him, high arbiter, 

910 Chance governs all. Into this wild Abyss, 
The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave, 
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, 
Bat all these in their pregnant causes mixed 
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, 

915 Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain 
His dark materials to create more worlds — 
Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend 
Stood on the brink of Hell and looked awhile, 
Pondering his voyage ; for no narrow frith 
He had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed 

898. — These are the four properties which were the 
basis of the four "elements"; Air, Earth, Water and 
Fire. These qualities were also supposed to enter com- 
bined in pairs, into the four "humours" of the human 
body : the Blood was hot and moist ; the Bile, hot and 
dry; the Phlegm, cold and moist; and the Black Bile, 
cold and dry. On the proper balance of these humours 
depended the health of the body. 



9-10 



146 PARADISE LOST 

With noises loud and ruinous (to compare 

Great things with small) than when Bellona storms 

With all her battering engines, bent to rase 

Some capital city ; or less than if this frame 

Of Heaven were falling, and these elements 925 

In mutiny had from her axle torn 

The steadfast Earth. At last his sail-broad vans 

He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke 

Uplifted spurns the ground ; thence many a league, 

As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides 930 

Audacious ; but, that seat soon failing, meets 

A vast vacuity; all unawares, 

Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops 

Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour 

Down had been falling, had not by ill chance 935 

The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, 

Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him 

As many miles aloft : that fury stayed — 

Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, 

Nor good dry land — nigh foundered, on he fares, 940 

Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, 

Half flying ; behoves him now both oar and sail. 

As when a gryphon through the wilderness 

With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale, 

Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth 945 

Had from his wakeful custody purloined 

The guarded gold : so eagerly the Fiend 

O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or 

rare, 
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, 



PARADISE LOST 147 

950 And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies. 
At length a universal hubbub wild 
Of stunning sounds and voices all confused, 
Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his ear 
With loudest vehemence. Thither he plies 

955 Undaunted, to meet there whatever Power 
Or Spirit of the nethermost Abyss 
Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask 
Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies 
Bordering on light ; when straight behold the throne 

960 Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread 

Wide on the wasteful Deep ! With him enthroned 
Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things, 
The consort of his reign ; and by them stood 
Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name 

965 Of Demogorgon ; Eumor next and Chance, 
And Tumult and Confusion all embroiled, 
And Discord with a thousand various mouths. 
To whom Satan, turning boldly, thus: — 'Ye 
Powers 
And Spirits of this nethermost Abyss, 

970 Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy, 
With purpose to explore or to disturb 
The secrets of your realm ; but, by constraint 
Wandering this darksome desert, as my way 
Lies through your spacious empire up to light, 

975 Alone and without guide, half lost, I seek 

What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds 
Confine with Heaven ; or if some other place, 
From your dominion won, the Ethereal King 



148 PARADISE LOST 

Possesses lately, thither to arrive 

I travel this profound. Direct my course : 980 

Directed, no mean recompense it brings 

To your behoof, if I that region lost, 

All usurpation thence expelled, reduce 

To her original darkness and your sway 

(Which is my present journey), and once more 985 

Erect the standard there of ancient Night. 

Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge!' 

Thus Satan ; and him thus the Anarch old, 
With faltering speech and visage incomposed, 
Answered: — 'I know thee, stranger, who thou art: 990 
That mighty leading Angel, who of late 
Made head against Heaven's King, though over- 
thrown. 
I saw and heard ; for such a numerous host 
Fled not in silence through the frighted deep, 
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, 995 

Confusion worse confounded; and Heaven-gates 
Poured out by millions her victorious bands, 
Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here 
Keep residence ; if all I can will serve 
That little which is left so to defend, 1000 

Encroached on still through our intestine broils 
Weakening the sceptre of old Night : first Hell, 
Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath ; 

1001. — Our; some editors read your, but Masson 
explains that the Anarch here used ' 'a form of speech 
which implicated all existing beings, and none par- 
ticularly." 



PARADISE LOST 149 

Now lately Heaven and Earth, another world 

1005 Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden chain 
To that side Heaven from whence your legions fell. 
If that way be your walk, you have not far ; 
So much the nearer danger. Go, and speed! 
Havoc, and spoil, and ruin, are my gain.' 

1010 He ceased ; and Satan stayed not to reply, 
But, glad that now his sea should find a shore, 
With fresh alacrity and force renewed 
Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire, 
Into the wild expanse, and through the shock 

1015 Of fighting elements, on all sides round 
Environed, wins his way ; harder beset 
And more endangered, than when Argo passed 
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks ; 
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned 

1020 Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steered: 
So he with difficulty and labor hard 
Moved on : with difficulty and labor he ; 
But, he once passed, soon after, when Man fell, 
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain, 

1025 Following his track (such was the will of Heaven) 
Paved after him a broad and beaten way 
Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling gulf 
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length, 

1004. — Heaven; not the Empyrean, as in 1. 1006, but 
the Ptolemaic spheres. 

1020.— The other whirlpool is Scylla. Cf. 1. 660. 

1028. — The building of this bridge is described in Bk. 
x, 11. 282-323. 



150 PARADISE LOST 

From Hell continued, reaching the utmost orb 

Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse 1030 

With easy intercourse pass to and fro 

To tempt or punish mortals, except whom 

God and good Angels guard by special grace. 

But now at last the sacred influence 
Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven 1035 
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night 
A glimmering dawn. Here Nature first begins 
Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire, 
As from her outmost works, a broken foe, 
With tumult less and with less hostile din ; 1040 

That Satan with less toil, and now with ease, 
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light, 
And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds 
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn ; 
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air, 1045 

Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold 
Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide 
In circuit, undetermined square or round, 
With opal towers, and battlements adorned 
Of living sapphire, once his native seat ; 1050 

And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain, 
This pendent World, in bigness as a star 
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon. 
Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge, 
Accurst, and in a cursed hour, he hies. 1055 

1030. — World; not the earth, but the Ptolemaic Uni- 
verse. So in 1, 1052. 



GLOSSARY 



Note.— Some of Milton's allusions to Greek and Roman mythology, 
which should be familiar, are not entered here: others are explained 
very briefly. It is assumed that the student has access to a classical, as 
well as to an ordinary English dictionary. 

Abbreviations.— Cf. {confer) compare, ff. following, passim, else- 
where, q. v. {quod vide) which see. s. v. {sub verbo) under the word. 



Abhorred, abhorrent; ii, 659. 

Abject, prostrate (Lat. abjectus) ; 
i, 312, 322. 

Abortive gulf, chaos— " abortive," 
because Nature there " breeds, 
Perverse, all monstrous, all pro- 
digious things" (ii, 624-5); ii, 
441. 

Abrupt; usedasauoun; ii, 409. 

Abused, deceived; i, 479. 

Acheron, ii, 578. See Styx. 

Act, bearing, behavior; ii, 109. 

Adamantine; adamant is an im- 
aginary metal, excessively hard 
and tough, employed symbolically 
in poetry (Gr. <iSa/u.a?, " the un- 
conquerable"); i, 48. Cf. ii, 436, 
646, 853. 

Admire, wonder (Lat. admirari) ; i, 
690. Cf. ii, 677-8. 

Adria, the Adriatic; i, 520. It will 
be noted that the gods flee west- 
ward. 

Advanced, upraised; i, 536. Cf. ii, 
682. 

Adverse, unnatural ; ii, 77. 

Advise, consider; ii, 376. 

Afflicted powers, our forces struck 
down (Lat. ajjlictus); i, 186. Cf. 
" Heaven's afflicting thunder," 
ii, 166. 



Affront, insult, though the mean- 
ing "confront" is possible; i, 390. 

Alcairo, Cairo, though Milton 
doubtless had in mind ancient 
Memphis, the site of which is not 
far from Cairo; i, 718. 

Alchymy, trumpets made of al- 
chymy, or alchemy, an alloy con- 
taining brass; ii, 517. 

Alcides, Hercules. The allusion is 
to his death as related by Ovid, 
Metamorphoses, ix ; ii, 542. 

Alp; ii, 620. Used in the general 
sense of "high mountain." 

Amazement of, utter bewilder- 
ment arising from; i,3l3. Cf. 1. 
281. 

Amerced of, deprived of (by way 
of penalty); i, 609-10. 

Ammiral, admiral, or chief ship 
(It. ammiraglia) ; i, 294. 

Amram's son, Moses; i, 339. For 
the allusion, see Exod. x, 12-15. 

Aonian Mount, Helicon — in the 
usual figurative sense; i, 15. The 
Heavenly, or sacred Muse, in- 
spires to loftier flights than the 
profane Muse of classical litera- 
ture. 

Arbitress, witness (as in Horace, 
Epodes. v, 50) ; i, 785. 



151 



152 



GLOSSARY 



Argo, the vessel in which Jason's 
expedition sailed on their quest 
for the golden fleece; ii, 1017. 

Argues, proves (Lat. arguere); ii, 
234. 

Argument, subject (Lat. argumen- 
tum) ; i, 24. 

Arimaspian; the Arimaspians are 
described by Herodotus (iii, 116) 
as a one-eyed race who steal gold 
from the gryphons, or griffins; ii, 
945. See Gryphon. 

Armoric, of Armorica, or Brittany, 
a country associated with the Ar- 
thurian romances; i, 581. 

Ashtaroth; plural of As(h)toreth, 
q. v.; i,422. 

Assert, vindicate (Lat. asserere); i, 
25. 

Astonished, stunned; i,266; ii, 423. 
Cf. " astounded 1 ', i, 281; "astonish- 
ment", i, 317. See the New Eng- 
lish Dictionary, s. v. astone. 

Astoreth, " whom the Phoenicians 
called Astarte " ; a moon-goddesa, 
the chief female deity of the 
Phoenicians and Canaanltes; i, 
438. Cf . Nativity Ode, 200. 

Attempted, assailed (Lat. attempt- 
are) ; ii, 357. So, perhaps, in 1. 44. 

Ausonian land, Italy; i. 739. 

Awful, full of awe, not, "inspiring 
awe"; ii. 478. 

Azazel; Milton may have taken 
this name from the marginal 
reading of Lev. xvi, 8— Authorized 
Version; i,534. 

Baalim; a plural form, used col- 
lectively of the various manifesta- 
tions of Baal, the chief male 
deity of the Phoenicians and Ca- 
naanites; i, 422. 

Barca...Cyrene, cities in northern 
Africa; ii,904. 

Beelzebub, or Baal-zebub, " Lord 
of Flies", .Satan's lieutenant (cf. 
i, 238); i, 81, 271; ii, 299, 378. In 



II Kings, i, 2, 3 this god is said to 
have beeu worshiped at Ekron, a 
city of the Philistines, in Pales- 
tine. Cf. Matt, xii, 24. 

Belial; strictly speaking not a 
proper noun, but a word meaning 
"lawlessness". Milton makes 
Belial a god typifying sensuality; 
i, 490,502; ii, 109, 226. 

Bellona, Goddess of War ; ii, 922. 

Belus, or Bel, an Assyrian god 
identified with the Phoenician 
Baal; i, 720. 

Bengala, Bengal; ii, 638. 

Bestial gods, deities in the form of 
beasts, like the Egyptian gods 
mentioned in 11. 478-482; i, 435. 

Books of Life, "And I saw the 
dead, small and great, stand be- 
fore God; and the books were 
opened: and another book was 
opened, which is the book of life: 
and the dead were judged out of 
those things which were written 
in the books, according to their 
works" (Bev. xx, 12) ; i, 363. 

Bossy, carved in relief; i, 716. 

Briareos. See JSneid x, 565-568, 
where the hundred-handed iEgae- 
on -= Briareos; i, 199. 

Brigad; Milton's spelling of " bri- 
gade " in the general sense of a 
large body of troops; i, 675. 
Cf. ii, 532. Note that the accent 
falls on the first syllable. 

Brooding; the Hebrew word ren- 
dered in the Author. "Vers, of 
Gen. i, 2 " moved", means prop- 
erly either " hovered," or 
'•hatched"; i, 21. 

Bullion dross, scum arising from 
the bullion, or crude ore; i, 704. 

Busiris, an apocryphal Egyptian 
king identified by Milton, for 
some unknown reason, with the 
Pharaoh who perished in the Bed 
Sea (Exod. xiv) ; i,307. 

Buxom, yielding; ii, 842. 



GLOSSARY 



153 



Celtic [fields], Prance; 1,521. 

Centre, probably tbo earth itself, 
conceived as the centre of the uni- 
verse; i, 686. 

Cerberean; the allusion is to Cer- 
berus, the three-headed watch- 
dog of Hades; ii, 655. 

Chaos, the "vast abyss" (i, 21) , or 
"hoary deep" (ii, 891) separating 
the Empyrean and Hell; the raw 
material out of which Hell and 
our Universe are constructed; i, 
10 and passim. See Introduction; 
also the "Anarch old" (ii, 988) 
who rules over this region; ii, 233 
and passim. 

Charybdis, a monster dwelling on 
the rocky rim of a whirlpool in 
the Straits of Messina; ii, 1020. 
See Scylla. For the allusion 
to Ulysses, see Odyssey, xii. 

Cheinos, " the abomination of 
Moab" (I Kings, xi, 7), really 
identical with Moloch, q. v. ; i, 406. 
" Peor his other name, when he 
enticed Israel in Sittim" (i, 412-3) ; 
see Numb, xxv, 1-3. The places 
where he is represented in 11. 407- 
411 as being worshiped, are in the 
district occupied by the tribe of 
Reuben, east of the Dead Sea ("the 
Asphaltic Pool", 1. 411). 

Cherub, i. 157, 324, 534. Cherubim 
(pi. of Cherub), i, 387, 665,794; ii, 
516. See Seraphim. 

Chivalry; the same word etymo- 
logically as " cavalry". Probably 
here used loosely for "troops"; 
i, 307, 765. 

Clime, climate; i, 242, 297; region; 
ii, 572. 

Close, secret; i, 646,795; ii, 485. 

Cocytus, ii, 579. See Styx. 

Combustion; probably here used 
literally, not, as some editors say, 
figuratively for "destruction"; i. 
46. 



Compose, adjust advantageously; 
li, 281. 

Confer, discuss (used transitively— 
Lat. conferre) ; i, 774. 

Confine with, border on; ii, 977. 

Confounded, put to utter confu- 
sion; i, S3. Cf. ii, 996. 

Conjured, sworn together (Lat. 
conjurare) ; ii, 693. 

Considerate, considering; i,603. 

Consult, secret meeting; i, 798. 

Converse, associate (Lat. conver- 
sari) ; ii, 184. 

Convex, convexity; ii, 434. Satan 
takes the point of view of one 
looking down on Hell from the 
outside. 

Cope, cover, roof ; i,345. 

Couch; ii. 536. To "couch" a spear 
was to fix the butt in the "rest"— 
a projection on the right side of 
the breast-plate— ready for the 
charge. 

Counsels different, internal dis- 
sensions; i, 636. 

Cressets, lamps in which solid sub- 
stances (in this case" asphaltus") 
were burned; i, 728. 

Cry, pack; ii,654. 

Dagon, the fish-god of the Philis- 
tines; i, 462. See I Sam. v, 1-4. In 
11. 464-6 he is represented as being 
worshiped in the five chief 
cities of the Philistines men- 
tioned in I Sam. vi, 17. Azotus = 
the Biblical Ashdod ; Ascalon 
= Askelon; Accaron = Ekron. 

Damp, depressed; i. 523. 

Danaw, the Danube (Germ. Donau) ; 
i, 353. 

Deceive, beguile, as in " to beguile 
the time" ; ii, 461. 

Deform, shapeless (Lat. deforinis) ; 
ii, 706. 

Delphian cliff, Parnassus; i, 517. 

Demogorgon, one of the deities of 
Hell mentioned by late Latin and 



154 



GLOSSARY 



Italian writers. Spenser {Fairy 
Queen IV, ii, 47, 6-9) makes him 
warden of Chaos; ii, 365. The 
phrase " Dreaded name of Demo- 
gorgon" (i. e. D. himself) has its 
analogy in the Scriptures and in 
the classics. Here the phrase 
heightens the general sense of 
awe and mystery. 

Denounced, threatened (Lat. de- 
nuntiare) ; ii, 106. 

Determined, settled; ii, 330. 

Discover, reveal; i, 64,724. 

Dodona, in Epirus— the seat of an 
oracle of Zeus; i,518. 

Dorian mood, a grave and strenu- 
ous style of Greek music; i,550. 

Drench, soaking— not "draught"; 
ii. 73 

Earth-born, probably the Giants, 
who, like the Titans, had Ge 
(Earth) for a mother; i, 198. 

Element, sky; ii, 490. Elements, 
appropriate surroundings; ii, 275. 
There is a suggestion here, per- 
haps, of the mediaeval theory 
that each of the four "ele- 
ments"— air, earth, fire, and 
water— is controlled by some par- 
ticular demon. Verity (in his Ap- 
pendix C) points out that Hooker 
identified these elemental demons 
with the fallen angels. 

Elevate, elevated; ii, 558. 

Eli's sons; i, 495. The allusion is 
to I Sam. ii, 12-17. 

Emblazed, emblazoned, decorated 
with heraldic designs ("Seraphic 
arms" 1 ); i, 538. Cf. emblazonry, ii, 
513. 

Empyreal, fiery; i, 117; ii, 430, 
1047. 

Empyrean, Heaven (Gr. e^irvpo?, 
" burning"') ; ii, 771. 

Engines, contrivances; i, 750. The 
" almighty engine" mentioned 
in ii, 65 is the war chariot of 



God, described in Bk. vi, 749 ff. 

827 ff. 
Erected, erect, with a suggestion of 

"upright" in the moral sense; i, 

679. 
Erst, formerly; i, 360; ii, 470. 
Essence, substance; i, 425; ii, 215. 

Essences, i, 138. 
Essential, substance; ii, 97. See 

Essence. 
Ethereal sky, the Empyrean ; i, 45 . 
Ethiopian; "the wide Ethiopian," 

the Indian Ocean; ii, 641. "The 

Cape " is the Cape of Good Hope. 
Event, result; i,624; ii, 82. 
Exercise, torment (Lat. exercere); 

ii, 89. 
Expatiate, walk about (Lat. 

spatiari) ; i, 774. 

Fact, feat (Lat. factum) ; ii, 124. Cf. 

ii, 537, and the French fait d' annex. 
Fail; "If I fail not," if I mistake 

not (Lat. nifallor) ; i, 167. 
Fall, befaU; ii, 203. 
Fame, report; i,651; ii, 346. 
Fast by, close by; i, 12. 
Fatal, securely established (by 

fate) ; ii, 104. 
Field, battle; i, 105 ; ii, 292. Fields, 

ii, 768. 
Flown, flushed; i,502. 
Forgetful lake, the lake which 

makes one forget; ii, 74. Cf. " ob- 
livious pool ,"i, 266. 
Founded, melted (Lat. fundere) ; i, 

703. 
Frequent, crowded (Lat. frequens) ; 

i, 797. 
Front, brow (Lat. from); ii, 302. 
Fronted, confronting; ii, 532. 
Frore, frosty (Anglo-Saxon froren, 

frozen); ii, 595. 

Gibeah; i,504. See Judges xix. 
Globe, a compact, ring-like mass 
(Lat. globus) ; ii, 512. 



GLOSSARY 



155 



Gorgons... Hydras. ..Chimaeras, are 

mentioned in JEneid, vi, 287-9 as 
beasts of Hell. The Gorgons 
were snaky-haired monsters with 
wings and brazen claws; Hydras 
were many-headed water-drag- 
ons; Chimaeras had the heads of 
lions, the bodies of goats, and the 
tails of serpents; ii, 628. 

Goshen, the district in Egypt 
temporarily occupied by the Is- 
raelites (Gen. xlvii, 27) ; i, 309. 

Grand; "our grandparents", our 
original progenitors; i, 29. Cf. 
Lat. grandts, aged. 

Gross, large; ii, 570. 

Grunsel, ground-sill, threshold; i, 
460. 

Gryphon, or Griffin; a monster, 
part eagle and part lion, whose 
business it was to guard treasure; 
ii, 943. See Arimaspian. 

Happy Isle, the Ptolemaic Uni- 
verse, suspended in Chaos by a 
golden chain; ii, 410. Cf. ii, 1051-2. 

Ilaralds, heralds (It. araldi); i, 752. 
Harald's; ii, 518. 

Hard by, close by; i, 417. 

Harpy-footed; ii, 596. The Harpies 
(fabulous loathsome birds; are de- 
scribed in JEneid, iii, 211-18. 

Hesperian fields, Italy; i, 520. 

Highth, Milton's spelling of 
" height "; i, 24 and passim. 

Hill of scandal; i, 416. See Oppro- 
brious Hill. 

Hinnom, " Tophet thence And 
black Gehenna called, the type 
of Hell " ; i, 404. See Jer. vii, 31, 
32. Because of its association 
with the worship of Moloch, 
Josiah made Hinnom a depository 
for the waste and filth of Jerusa- 
lem. Gehenna, Greek for Qe Hin- 
nom, Valley of Hinnom, is several 
times translated Hell in the New 
Testament. 



Holds, makes for; ii, 1043. 
Horrent, bristling; ii, 513. 
Horrid; used sometimes with a 

suggestion of the Lat. horridm, 

bristling; i, 503; ii, 63, 710. Cf. 

" horrent," ii, 513. 
Humane, polite (Lat. humanus) ; ii, 

109. 

Impaled, fenced in; ii, 647. 

Impious, unfilial (Lat. impius); i, 
686. 

Incense, kindle (Lat. incendere) ; ii, 
94. 

Incomposed, discomposed (Lat. 
incompositus) ; ii, 989. 

Ind, India; ii, 2. 

Indian Mount, perhaps Imaus 
(cf. Bk. iii, 431), an ancient name 
for apart of the Himalayas; 1,781. 
See Infantry. 

Infantry; "that small infantry 
Warred on by cranes," the Pyg- 
mies—see Iliad, iii, 6. They were 
supposed by Pliny (Natural History 
vii, 2) and others to dwell in India 
(cf. i, 780-1); i,575. 

Influence, inflowing; ii, 1034. In 
astrology the word was applied in 
a technical sense, here suggested, 
to the direct control over human 
destiny attributed to the stars. 
Sacred is explained by Bk. iii, 1-6. 

Instinct, inflamed; ii, 937. 

Intend, consider (cf. Lat. intendere 
animum) ; ii, 457. 

Intrenched, furrowed; i, 601. 

Invests, clothes (Lat. investire); i, 



Javan, grandson of Noah (Gen. x. 
2), said to have been the progeni- 
tor of the Greek (" Ionian ") race; 
i, 508. 

Ken; " as far as Angels ken," as far 
as Angels see. It may be, how- 
ever, that we should read with 



156 



GLOSSARY 



Masson and others, " as far as 
Angel's ken," i.e. as far as an 
angel's vision reaches. The first 
edition reads " as far as Angels 
kenn"; but since the apostrophe 
is not printed with the possessive 
in this edition, it is doubtful 
whether ken is a verb or a noun; 
i, 59. 

Laboring, suffering eclipse (Lat. 

laborare, cf. Juvenal, vi, 442; Virg. 

Georgics, ii, 478) ; ii, 665. 
Laid, quieted; i, 172. 
Landskip, landscape; ii, 491. 
Lethe, ii, 583. Lethean sound, ii, 

604. See Styx. 
Leviathan; a Hebrew term for a 

vaguely conceived sea monster; 

i, 201. See Ps. civ, 26; Job xli. 
Libyan, African; i, 355. 
Lore, lesson; ii, 815. 
Luxurious, probably " lustful," as 

inShakspere; i, 498. 

Mammon; not strictly a proper 
noun ; Milton makes him the per- 
sonification of wealth; i, 678; ii, 
228, 291. 

Mansion, abiding place (Lat. man- 
ere); i,268; ii, 462. 

Marie; used loosely for "soil;" i,296. 

Medusa, one of the three Gorgons, 
q.v.\ 11,611. 

Memphian, Egyptian, from Mem- 
phis ; i, 307. " The works of Mem- 
phian Kings," the pyramids; i, 
694. 

Michael, one of the archangels who 
warred against Satan; ii, 294. The 
havoc wrought by his sword is de- 
scribed in Bk. vi, 250 ff., 320 ff. 

Middle, middling; or perhaps Mil- 
ton is thinking of the "middle 
air," or the region of cloud which 
the Olympian deities looked upon 
as the " highest heaven" (i, 517), 
not being aware of the region of 



pure ether lying above it. Be- 
sides these, mediaeval authorities 
recognized a third division of the 
Heavens— a substratum of hot, 
moist air close to the earth; i, 14. 

Mixed with; ii, 69. Probably 
"thrown into confusion by", a 
meaning derived from the Lat. 
miscere. 

Moloch, written Molech in the Scrip- 
tures, "the abomination of the chil- 
dren of Ammon " (I Kings xi, 7) ; 
i, 392, 417; ii, 43. Sandys, Relation 
of a Journey Begun A.D.1610, Lond., 
1615, p. 186, describes Moloch as a 
hollow brass idol filled with fire. 
Children were laid as sacrificial 
offerings in the extended arms of 
the image and " seared to death 
with his burning embracements." 
Cf . II Kings, xxiii, 10. Of the places 
associated (i, 397-9) with his wor- 
ship, Kabba was the capital of the 
Ammonites; "watery plain" is 
explained by II Sam. xii,27; Argob 
was a district of Basan or Bashan, 
really outside the territory of the 
Ammonites ; the river Arnon sep- 
arated Moab from the territory of 
the Amorites. 

Mortal, producing death; i, 2, 766; 
ii, 729. 

Motion, method of moving, ii, 75; 
power to act, ii, 151. Motions, 
proposals; ii, 191. 

Mould, substance; ii, 139, 355. 

Mulciber, Hephsestus; i, 740. His 
fall is described in Iliad, i, 591 ff. 

Nathless, nevertheless (Anglo- 
Saxon wa thy ices) ; i, 299. 

Night-foundered, overtaken by the 
night and hidden from view, as if 
sunk in darkness; i, 204. 

Nightly, by night; i, 440; ii, 642. 

Obdured, hardened; ii, 568. 
Oblivious, causing to forget (Lat. 



GLOSSARY 



157 



obliviosus); 1, 266. Cf. "forgetful 
lake," ii, 74. 

Obscure, obscurity, darkness; ii, 
406. Cf. Exod. x, 21. 

Observed, heeded (Lat. observare)\ 
i,588. 

O'erwatched, worn out with watch- 
ing; ii, 288. 

Offend, do violence to (Lat. offen- 
dere), not merely " displease "; i, 
187. 

Offensive mountain, i, 443. See 
Opprobrious hill. 

Ophiuchus, " the serpent holder," a 
northern constellation; ii, 709. 

Opinion, public opinion, reputa- 
tion; ii, 471. 

Opposition; two heavenlv bodies 
are said to be in opposition when 
their longitudes differ by 180°. Mil- 
ton means that Death was sitting 
opposite Sin, on the other side of 
the gate; ii, 803. 

Opprobrious hill, the Mount of 
Olives, called the " Mount of Cor- 
ruption" and " Mount of Offense," 
because Solomon worshiped idols 
there (I Kings xi, 7; II Kings 
xxiii, 13); i, 403. Cf. "hill of 
scandal," 1. 416, and " offensive 
mountain," 1. 443. 

Optic glass, telescope; i, 288. 

Oracle of God, the temple on 
Mount Moriah (I Kings vi, 16; 
viii,6); i, 12. 

Orb, orbit; ii, 1029. 

Orcus ..Ades, names for Pluto, God 
of Hell; ii, 964. 

Ordered, a military word used as 
in the modern command " order 
arms"; i, 565. 

Oreb, or.. .Sinai, i,7; "Milton, con- 
trasting Exod. xix, 20, with Deut. 
iv, 10, does not decide whether the 
mountain where Moses received 
the Law should be called ' Oreb or 
Sinai.' The accounts can be har- 



monized easily: Horeb was the 
whole range, Sinai its lower part." 
— Verity. 

Orient, brilliant; 1,546. The adjec- 
tive was first applied in this sense 
to oriental pearls, which were sur- 
passingly lustrous. In ii, 399, the 
more familiar meaning is also 
suggested. 

Original, parent (Adam); ii, 375. 

Ormus, an island in the Persian 
Gulf, called by Howell (Familiar 
Letters, Jacobs's ed., p. 157) " the 
greatest Mart in all the Orient for 
all sorts of Jewels : " ii, 2. 

Osi ris, Isis, Osus, Egyptian dei ties ; 
i, 478. 

Pandemonium, Hall of all the 
Demons (Gr. irav + 5ai>wi>) ; i, 756. 

Paramount, chief ; ii, 508. 

Partial, i.e., to themselves; they 
smoothed over their own guilt; 
ii, 552. 

Passion, strong emotion, not anger; 
i, 605; ii, 564. 

Paynim, Pagan ; i, 765. 

Pealed, dinned; ii, 920. 

Pelorus, the ancient name for Cape 
Faro, the northeast promontory of 
Sicily; i,232. 

Pennons, pinions (Lat. pennce); ii, 
933. 

Peor, i, 412. See Chemos. 

Pernicious, destructive; i,282. 

Phlegethon, ii, 580. See Styx. 

Phlegra; " the giant brood Of 
Phlegra", the Giants, who, ac- 
cording to Pindar (First Nemean 
Ode, 67 ) ,"warred on Jove" (1. 198) 
in the plain of Phlegra, supposed 
to have been situated in Cam- 
pania; i, 577. 

Pitch, height: ii, 772. 

Poise, give weight to; ii, 905. 

Power, a military force; i, 103. Cf. 
1. 186. 

Prevented, forestalled (Lat. prce- 



158 



GLOSSARY 



venire) ; ii, 467 ; with a suggestion 
of the modern meaning "checked" 
which appears in ii, 739. 

Prick, spur— often used of riding in 
general; ii, 536. 

Prime, foremost; i,506; ii, 423. 

Proffer, volunteer; ii, 425. 

Proper, natural (Lat. proprius) ; ii, 
75. 

Pygmean, race; i, 780. See Infan- 
try. 

Pythian fields; the allusion is to 
the games near Delphi in honor of 
Pythian Apollo; ii, 530. 

Recess, retirement; i, 795. 

Recked, cared; ii, 50. 

Recorders, musical instruments 

similar to the flageolet; i, 551. 
Redounding, abundant (Lat. re- 

dundare); ii, 889. 
Reign, realm (Lat. regnum); i, 543. 
Religions, religious ceremonials; 

i, 372. 
Reluctance; "untamed reluctance 1 ', 

untamable or unconquerable re- 
sistance; ii, 337. 
Remorse, pity, as often in Shak- 

spere; i,605. 
Rhene, the Rhine (Lat. Ehenus); i, 

353. 
Rimmon, a Syrian god worshiped 

at Damascus; i, 467. 
Rout, rabble; i, 747; overthrow; 

ii, 770, 995. 
Royalties, royal honors; ii, 451. 
Ruin, heavy fall (Lat. ruina); i, 46; 

ii, 995. 

Satan, in Hebrew, " adversary" or 
" enemy"; i, 82 and passim. Cf. ii, 
629. 

Scope, mark; ii, 127. 

Scylla, described in Mneid, iii, 424 ff. 
as a monster living in a whirlpool 
on the Italian (" Calabrian M ) side 
of the Straits of Messina. On the 
opposite Sicilian (" Trinacrian "; 



shore, dwelt Charybdis (ii, 1020); 
ii, 660. 

Seat, abode (Lat. sedes); i, 5 and 
passim. 

Secret, retired, secluded (Lat. se- 
cretus), with perhaps a suggestion 
of the mysteries associated with 
the burning bush (Exod. iii) and 
the giving of the Law (Exod. 
xix ff;; i, 6. 

Sensible, sense; ii, 278. Cf. " this 
essential", 1. 97. 

Sentence, opinion (Lat. sententia); 
ii,51,291. 

Senteries, sentries; ii, 412. 

Seon, i, 409, same as Sihon: "For 
Heshbon was the city of Sihon the 
king of the Amorites " (Numb. 
xxi,26). 

Seraph; i, 324. Seraphic; i, 539, 794. 
Seraphim; i, 129; ii, 512, 750. Ac- 
cording to the treatise on the celes- 
tial hierarchies formerly ascribed 
to Dionysius the Areopagite, the 
nine angelic orders were as fol- 
lows, beginning with the highest 
in rank: Seraphim, Cherubim, 
Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, 
Powers, Principalities, Archan- 
gels, Angels. Milton employs 
these terms, but not consistently. 

Serapis, an Assyrian god identified 
with the Greek Hades; i, 720. 

Serbonian bog, the treacherous 
Lake Serbonis, in Lower Egypt, 
described by Herodotus, iii, 5. 
Damiata is a city near the mouth 
of the Nile; ii, 592. 

Severing, separating; i, 704. 

Sidonian; Sidon was a city of the 

Phoenicians; i, 441. 
Siloa's brook, the pool (Siloam) 
with its outlet, lying in the valley 
between Zion and Mount Moriah, 
the hills on which stood the tem- 
ple (" oracle of God') ; i, 11. 
Sion hill, better known as Zion, 
one of the hills of Jerusalem; i. 



GLOSSARY 



159 



10. Here was the residence of 
David the Psalmist— heuce the 
allusion. 
Slip, let slip; i, 178. 
Sluiced, conducted in sluices; i, 702. 
Sodom, see Gen. xix; i,503. 

Soldan, Sultan (It. soldano); i, 764. 
The allusion is to the duels de- 
scribed in the romances of chiv- 
alry as fought between the 
Christians and the Saracens in 
Palestine, either to the death 
("mortal combat") or for pur- 
poses of exhibition (" career with 
lance"), the Sultan acting as um- 
pire. This is another instance of 
Milton's interest in mediaeval ro- 
mance. Cf. 11. 582 ff. 

Sovran, Milton's spelling of sov- 
ereign (It. sovrano) ; i, 246, 753; ii, 
244. Cf . Sovranty, ii, 446. 

Starve, cause to perish (Anglo- 
Saxon steorfan, to die); ii, 600. 
Formerly the word was not re- 
stricted, in its application, to death 
from lack of food. 

States, parliamentary representa- 
tives; ii, 387. 

Stations, guards (Lat. stationes); ii, 
412. 

Still, always; i, 68 and passim. 

Study, zealous pursuit (Lat. studi- 
urri); i,107. 

Style, title; ii,312. 

Styx (Gr. a-rvyelv, to hate), Acher- 
on (axos, pain), Cocytus(/cw/cuTos, 
wailing), Phlegethon ($A.eye'<W, 
flaming), Lethe (A^f. forget- 
fulness), the five rivers of Hell; 
ii, 576-85. 

Sublime, aloft (Lat. sublimis); ii, 
528. 

Sublimed; sublimation is the proc- 
ess of vaporizing a solid by the 
action of heat. We are to sup- 
pose that the hot subterranean 
wind which tears open Pelorus or 
.rfEtna, is aided in its work of de- 



struction by the explosive mineral 

vapors engendered by its contact 

with the combustible contents of 

the mountain; i,235. 
Success, used by Milton, as by 

Shakspere, for " outcome," good 

or bad; ii, 9, 123. 
Suffice, satisfy (Lat. sufflcere); i, 

148. 
Suspended, held in suspense, held 

spellbound; ii, 554. 
Suspense, in suspense (Lat. sus- 

pensus); ii, 418. 
Swage, assuage (Lat. suavis); i, 556. 
Syrtis, quicksand; from the two 

gulfs anciently so called, on the 

northern coast of Africa; ii, 939. 

Tantalus; punished in Hell, ac- 
cording to classical mythology, 
by continual thirst. He was placed 
in the midst of a lake, the water 
of which receded whenever he 
tried to reach it; ii, 614. 

Temper; used concretely for the 
thing tempered. Ethereal here 
means, as usual, heavenly; i, 285. 
Cf.ii, 812-3. 

Tempt, try; ii, 404. 

Ternate and Tidore, two of the 
Spice Islands in the Malay Archi- 
pelago; ii, 639. 

Thammuz,a Phoenician god, said to 
have been slain by a boar in Leba- 
non, and identified with the Greek 
Adonis. The fact that in the late 
spring the river Adonis runs red 
with the soil washed down from 
Lebanon, gave rise to the belief 
that Thammuz came to life and 
died again once a year, his blood 
staining the river. Annual re- 
ligious festivals were established 
in commemoration of this event: 
i, 446. For Ezekiel's vision, 1. 455, 
see Ezek. viii, 14. 

Thereafter, in conformity— consist- 
ently with these sentiments; ii,50. 



160 



GLOSSARY 



Titanian; the Titans were the re- 
bellious offspring of Uranus and 
Ge, conquered by Zeus; i, 198. Cf. 
i, 510-14. 

Took, charmed, as often in Shak- 
spere; ii, 554. 

Torments, ii, 274; see Tortures. 

Tortures, used of the torturing 
"Hell-flames and fury"; ii, 63. 
Cf. "torments, 1 ' ii, 274, for " that 
which torments." 

Tuscan artist, generally under- 
stood to refer to Galileo; i, 288. 
Fesole is a hill near Florence. 
Valdarno = a valley of the river 
Arno in which Florence lies. 

Typhoean, ii, 539; see Typhon. 

Typhon, or Typhosus, a hundred- 
headed monster described by Pin- 
dar, Pyth. i, 16-17, and ^Eschylus, 
P.V. 359, as living in a den 
of Cilicia, the capital of which was 
Tarsus; i,199. 

Tyranny, i, 124 ; used probably with 
all its present evil suggestion, 
rather than in the earlier sense of 
"monarchy." Cf. 1. 42, where Mil- 
ton is speaking in his own person. 

Uncouth, unknown, unfamiliar 
(Anglo-Saxon uncuth) ; ii, 407, 827. 

Understood, secret, that is, under- 
stood only among the devils; i, 
662. Cf. ii, 187. 

Unenvied, unenviable; ii, 23. 

Unessential, without substance; ii, 
439. Cf. Essence. 

Unfounded, bottomless ; ii, 829. 



Unmoved, collected; or perhaps "of 

his own accord " j ii, 429. 
Unnumbered, innumerable; ii , 903. 
Urges, afflicts (Lat. urgere) ; i, 68. 
Uther's son, Arthur, son of Uther 

Pendragon; i, 580. For Milton's 

early interest in this British hero, 

see Introd.,p, 26. 
Utmost Isles, the farthest isles, i.e., 

Britain; 1,521. 
Utter, outer; i, 72. 



Vallombrosa, a wooded valley near 
Florence; i, 303. 

Van, vanguard (Fr. avant-garde); 
ii, 535. 

Vans, wings (It. vanni) ; ii, 927. 

Virtue, valor (Lat. virtus) ; i, 320. 

Vision beatific, visio beatifica, the 
sight of God; in Milton's lines On 
Time he translates the phrase into 
" happy making sight" ; i,684. 

Voluminous, coiling (Lat. volu- 
men) ; ii, 652. 



Wafts, floats; ii, 1042. 

Want, be wanting; ii, 341. 

Warping, flying with an undulating 
motion; i,341. 

Weighs, balances; ii, 1046. 

What doubt we, Why do we hesi- 
tate? (Lat. Quid dubilamus?) ; ii, 94. 
Cf. ii, 329. 

What time, at the time when ; i, 36. 

Witnessed, bore witness to, not 
" observed"; i, 57. 

Wont, were wont to; i, 764. 



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